The dramatic increase in India’s purchases of Russian oil since the invasion of Ukraine is “opportunistic and deeply corrosive” of a global effort to isolate the Kremlin and curb Vladimir Putin’s war machine, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro wrote in the Financial Times.
In a strongly worded column, Navarro—long a hawkish voice and now an important force behind Donald Trump’s punitive global tariff—linked India’s trade barriers and what he characterized as its financial support for Russia, depicting dealings that come at the expense of the U.S.
“American consumers buy Indian goods,” he said. “India uses those dollars to buy discounted Russian crude.”
India’s External Affairs Ministry didn’t respond to an email seeking comment on Navarro’s column. The South Asian country has defended its right to buy oil from the cheapest source. The threat of penalties and additional tariffs for buying Russian crude is “unreasonable” and “extremely unfortunate,” Randhir Jaiswal, a foreign ministry spokesperson, said earlier this month.
Historically, India hasn’t been a significant importer of Russian crude, depending more heavily on the Middle East. That changed in 2022, after the invasion of Ukraine and a $60-per-barrel price cap imposed by the Group of Seven nations that aimed to limit the Kremlin’s oil revenue while keeping supplies flowing globally. India’s ability to purchase discounted cargoes was a feature of that mechanism acknowledged by U.S. officials.
Russia accounted for a negligible portion of India’s total imports in 2021, and the country has tended to depend far more heavily on the Middle East. Today, Russia makes up around 37% of imports, according to data analytics firm Kpler.
“This surge has not been driven by domestic oil consumption needs. Rather, what really drives this trade is profiteering by India’s Big Oil lobby,” Navarro said. “In effect, India acts as a global clearinghouse for Russian oil, converting embargoed crude into high-value exports while giving Moscow the dollars it needs.”
He also took a swipe at India’s oil tycoons and their ties to the government. Reliance Industries Ltd., owned by billionaire Mukesh Ambani, has been among the buyers of Russian crude. It has bought cargoes under long-term contracts.
“The proceeds flow to India’s politically connected energy titans, and in turn, into Vladimir Putin’s war chest,” Navarro said.
In the last few weeks, Trump has hit India with a 50% tariff rate—far higher than it placed on regional peers, partly to punish New Delhi for its Russian purchases. The doubling of an original levy comes into effect next week.
“This two-pronged policy will hit India where it hurts—its access to U.S. markets—even as it seeks to cut off the financial lifeline it has extended to Russia’s war effort,” Navarro said. “If India wants to be treated as a strategic partner of the U.S., it needs to start acting like one.”
India is the only major economy to be hit with what Trump calls “secondary tariffs”, though Beijing buys more of Moscow’s crude overall. Trump—eager to slash the U.S.’s trade deficit with India—has floated the possibility of higher levies on China over its Russian purchases, Navarro has downplayed that possibility, suggesting higher levels would hurt the U.S. economy.
Peter Navarro, White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing, speaks to members of the media outside the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025.
Foreign investor holdings of Treasuries climbed to a record high in June, showcasing sustained overseas demand for US government debt even as a slump in the dollar stoked concerns about sentiment toward American assets.
Foreign holdings totaled $9.13 trillion for June, up $80.2 billion from May, Treasury Department figures showed Friday. For the first half of the year, foreign holdings went up by $508.1 billion. That was during a period in which one benchmark gauge of the dollar tumbled by almost 11%, the most since 1973.
Britain and Belgium saw the biggest gains in holdings, while India — currently embroiled in a trade battle with the Trump administration — and Ireland posted declines. China’s stockpile was little changed. Holdings are affected by net sales or purchases along with shifts in valuation. The Bloomberg US Treasury index advanced in June, after a selloff the previous month.
Japan, the biggest holder of Treasuries, saw a $12.6 billion rise in its holdings, to $1.15 trillion, while China’s stockpile — now the third larges, behind the UK — ticked up $100 million $756.4 billion. Belgium, whose holdings include Chinese custodial accounts according to market analysts, saw its stockpile go up by $17.9 billion, to $433.4 billion.
Britain’s holdings jumped by $48.7 billion, the most since March 2023, to $858.1 billion.
India’s total dropped by $7.9 billion, to $227.4 billion.
Overseas holdings of Treasuries have been in focus against a backdrop of concern about foreign demand after President Donald Trump slapped tariff increases on the rest of the world. Foreign funds and governments hold over 30% of US Treasuries outstanding.
In 1981, the year Airbus SE announced it would build a new single-aisle jetliner to take on Boeing Co., the 737 ruled the roost.
The US-made narrowbody, already in use for more than a decade, had reshaped the airline industry by making shorter routes cheaper and more profitable to operate. By 1988, when Airbus began producing its upstart A320, Boeing had built a formidable lead by delivering some 1,500 of its cigar-shaped best-seller.
It’s taken the better part of four decades, but Airbus has finally caught up: The A320 series is poised to overtake its US competitor as the most-delivered commercial airliner in history, according to aviation consultancy Cirium. As of early August, Airbus had winnowed the gap to just 20 units, with 12,155 lifetime A320-family shipments, according to the data. That difference is likely to disappear as soon as next month.
“Did anyone back then expect it could become number one – and on such high production volumes?” Max Kingsley-Jones, head of advisory at Cirium Ascend, wrote of the A320 in a recent social-media post. “I certainly didn’t, and nor probably did Airbus.”
The A320’s success mirrors the European planemaker’s decades-long rise from fledgling planemaker to serious contender, and finally Boeing’s better. By the early 2000s, annual deliveries of the A320 and its derivatives had surpassed the 737 family; total orders eclipsed the Boeing jet in 2019. But the 737 stubbornly remained the most-delivered commercial aircraft of all time.
At the outset, Airbus faced an uphill battle. The European planemaker, an assemblage of aerospace manufacturers formed in 1970 with backing from European governments, didn’t yet offer a full aircraft lineup. Infighting hindered everything from product planning to manufacturing, and leadership decisions had to finely balance French and German commercial and political interests.
Yet it was clear even then that Airbus needed a presence in the narrowbody segment to firmly establish itself as Boeing’s top rival. Those aircraft are by far the most widely flown category in commercial aviation, typically connecting city pairs on shorter routes.
Higher fuel costs and the deregulation of the US aviation industry in the late 1970s had given the European planemaker an opening with American airline executives, who clamored for an all-new single-aisle, according to a history of Airbus written by journalist Nicola Clark.
To set the A320 apart, Airbus took some risks. It selected digital fly-by-wire controls that saved weight over traditional hydraulic systems, and gave pilots a side-stick at their right or left hand instead of a centrally mounted yoke. The aircraft also sat higher off the ground than the 737 and came with a choice of two engines, giving customers greater flexibility.
Airbus’s gamble paid off. Today, the A320 and 737 make up nearly half of the global passenger jet fleet in service. And the A320’s success contrasts with strategic blunders like the A380 behemoth that proved short-lived because airlines couldn’t profitably operate the giant plane. Boeing maintained that smaller, nimbler planes like the 787 Dreamliner would have an edge — a prediction that proved right.
Yet the longtime dominance of the two narrowbody aircraft raises questions about the vitality of a duopoly system that favors stability over innovation. Both airplane makers have repeatedly opted for incremental changes that squeeze efficiencies out of their top-selling models, rather than going the more expensive route of designing a replacement aircraft from scratch.
Airbus was first to introduce new engines to its A320, turning the neo variant into a huge hit with airlines seeking to cut their fuel bill. Under pressure, Boeing followed, but its approach proved calamitous. The US planemaker came up with the 737 Max, strapping more powerful engines onto the aircraft’s aging, low-slung frame.
It installed an automated flight-stabilizing feature called MCAS to help manage the higher thrust and balance out the plane. Regulators later found MCAS contributed to two deadly 737 Max crashes that led to a global grounding of the jet for 20 months, starting in 2019.
More recently, Airbus has been bedeviled by issues with the fuel-efficient engines that power the A320neo. High-tech coatings that allow its Pratt & Whitney geared turbofans to run at hotter temperatures have shown flaws, forcing airline customers to send aircraft in for extra maintenance, backing up repair shops and grounding hundreds of jets waiting for inspection and repair.
With both narrowbody families near the end of their evolutionary timeline, analysts and investors have begun asking about what’s next. China, for its part, is seeking to muscle into the market with its Comac C919 model that’s begun operating in the country, but hasn’t so far been certified to fly in Europe or the US.
Boeing Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg said in July that the company is working internally toward a next-generation plane, but is waiting for engine technology and other factors to fall into place, including restoring cash flow after years of setbacks.
“That’s not today and probably not tomorrow,” he said on a July 29 call.
Airbus’s healthier finances give it more flexibility to explore design leaps. CEO Guillaume Faury toyed with rolling out a hydrogen-powered aircraft — potentially with a radical “flying wing” design — in the mid-2030s but has since pushed back the effort to focus on a conventional A320 successor.
The Toulouse, France-based company is considering an open-rotor engine that would save fuel through its architecture rather than the current jet turbines that push the limits of physics to eke out gains.
Speaking at the Paris Air Show in June, Faury called the A320 “quite an old platform” and affirmed plans to launch a successor by the end of this decade, with service entry in the mid-2030s.
“I have a lot of focus on preparing that next-generation of single aisle,” Faury said. “We are very steady and very committed to this.”
Current and former OpenAI employees plan to sell approximately $6 billion worth of shares to an investor group that includes Thrive Capital, SoftBank Group Corp. and Dragoneer Investment Group, in a deal that values the ChatGPT maker at $500 billion, according to people familiar with the matter.
The talks are early and the size of the share sale could still change, said the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. The secondary share investment is on top of SoftBank’s commitment to lead OpenAI’s $40 billion funding round, which values the company at $300 billion, according to another person familiar with the deal. That round remains ongoing, with OpenAI recently securing $8.3 billion from a syndicate of investors.
Representatives for Dragoneer and Thrive didn’t respond to requests for comment. Spokespeople for OpenAI and SoftBank declined to comment. All three firms are existing OpenAI backers.
The secondary share sale, which was first reported by Bloomberg, will give OpenAI employees a chance to get cash-rich amid a high-stakes talent war in the artificial intelligence industry. Companies like Meta Platforms Inc. are offering massive salaries to recruit AI talent from OpenAI and other startups. This year, several OpenAI employees have exited for Meta, including Shengjia Zhao, a co-creator of ChatGPT.
Allowing employees to sell shares is an important tool for startups trying to retain top talent, without requiring the company to go public or be acquired. In some cases, early investors also use these deals to sell down their stakes, though OpenAI investors are not eligible to do so in this round, according to a person familiar with the matter. Current and former employees who spent at least two years at the company are able to participate.
With its participation in the share sale, as well as its previous commitments, SoftBank is making a pivotal bet on the success of OpenAI. In addition to those deals, the Japanese conglomerate headed by Masayoshi Son recently closed a separate $1 billion purchase of OpenAI employee shares at a $300 billion valuation, according to a person familiar with the matter. Negotiations for that deal started before talks around the $500 billion secondary valuation began, they said.
The $500 billion valuation would make OpenAI the world’s most valuable startup, surpassing Elon Musk’s SpaceX. The company expects revenue to triple this year to $12.7 billion, up from $3.7 billion in 2024, Bloomberg has reported. And the secondary deal talks come on the heels of the release of its highly-anticipated GPT-5 model.
This week, OpenAI chief Sam Altman sat down with a group of reporters and shared his vision for the company, including that it wants to spend trillions of dollars on the infrastructure required to run AI services in the “not very distant future.”
“You should expect a bunch of economists to wring their hands and say, ‘This is so crazy, it’s so reckless,’ and whatever,” Altman said. “And we’ll just be like, ‘You know what? Let us do our thing.’”
Michael Saylor has built a career on testing how far conviction can bend markets—part financier, part preacher. Now the Strategy Inc. chairman is betting that same belief on what may be his riskiest financing experiment yet.
Over the years, Saylor has urged followers to pour their savings into Bitcoin, mortgage their homes, even “sell a kidney.” To admirers, he’s a prophet with a balance sheet; to skeptics, a showman with an obsession. Either way, he’s turned a once-obscure software company into the world’s largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, playing the markets with a conviction most executives would never dare.
Now, Saylor is asking for a different kind of leap of faith: embracing an unorthodox financing instrument— perpetual preferred stock—to shift away from common stock sales and convertible bonds that helped build a $75 billion Bitcoin war chest. The twist: these securities never mature and some can skip dividend payments, making them flexible for the issuer but unnerving for investors.
Branded “Stretch,” the latest issuance pays dividends with a variable rate and offers no voting rights. This kind of security is neither debt nor common equity, but Saylor hopes it combines advantages of both, giving him fresh cash to keep buying Bitcoin without heavily diluting shareholders. Over the next four years, he plans to retire billions in convertible notes, curtail common stock sales, and issue more preferred offerings as his main funding source.
The gamble is audacious: to create, as the firm puts it, a “BTC Credit Model,” where a volatile asset underpins a stream of income securities. If there’s big demand, he speculates it could even raise “$100 billion… even $200 billion” in theory. If not, Strategy, as MicroStrategy now calls itself, could be left juggling payouts with no buyers. Selling Bitcoin is a near-taboo, given Saylor’s ‘hold on for dear life’ gospel that coins are sacred. Supporters see the preferreds as a clever way to keep crypto buying; critics warn that the payouts are costly and could become a burden if Bitcoin’s price turns.
So far this year, the company has raised around $6 billion across four perpetual preferred offerings. The latest, a $2.5 billion “Stretch” tranche, ranked among the largest crypto capital raises this year, eclipsing Circle’s high-profile IPO. Nearly a quarter of the sale went to retail buyers, per a firm presentation, cementing Saylor’s devoted following as a key funding source.
“I have no past knowledge of any company doing this the way that MicroStrategy has just to capitalize on the retail fervor,” said Michael Youngworth, head of global convertibles and preferred strategy at Bank of America.
That retail tilt stands out in the corporate preferred market, dominated by investment-grade utilities and banks. Strategy is unrated, making its preferreds junior in the structure and outside the comfort zone of many fixed-income investors. If retail appetite fades, Saylor would need to win over insurers and pensions—the buyers he says he hopes to attract—or risk falling short of his blockbuster-fundraising ambitions.
Since the start of 2024, Saylor has raised over $40 billion through a mix of stock and bonds—$27 billion from common equity sales, $13.8 billion from fixed-income securities—transforming Strategy into a Bitcoin proxy for Wall Street. Part of the pivot is practical: the convertibles market excludes retail.
Strategy CEO Phong Le framed the shift as a way to build a more resilient capital structure—a contrast to 2022’s “crypto winter,” when the company was burdened by a Bitcoin-backed loan from Silvergate and other debt. “Over time, we may not have convertible notes,” he said, “we will be relying on perpetual preferred notes that don’t ever come due.”
Yet the plan depends on paying large, ongoing dividends in perpetuity, using an asset—Bitcoin—that produces no income and has historically lost half its value in months. If Bitcoin prices fall and investors lose interest, the company could be stuck with big bills and no easy way to raise fresh cash.
Perpetual preferreds don’t mature, and in some cases, dividends can be deferred without triggering default. Under current terms, Strategy can pay some obligations in cash or shares and certain payouts are non-cumulative, meaning missed payments don’t have to be made up. For now, payouts are financed largely by selling common stock through its at-the-market program—a stream Saylor has vowed to slow, but not shut off entirely. Still, the company has said it could sell shares even below its typical 2.5 net asset-value threshold, if needed to cover debt interest or preferred dividends.
Perpetual preferreds never have to be repaid, unlike convertibles, which either dilute shareholders if they convert or must be repaid in cash if they don’t. That matters because one of Strategy’s quietest advantages has been its ability to sell stock at prices well above the value of its Bitcoin holdings. It’s a gap Saylor himself dubbed the “mNAV premium” – a multiple of net asset value, helping Saylor raise cash and buy Bitcoin at a discount.
“With their mNAV premium compressing in recent weeks, I think management is rightfully concerned about creating too much dilution,” said Brian Dobson, managing director for disruptive technology equity research at Clear Street.
Still, the funding model brings its own hazards. “These are high-yielding instruments,” said Youngworth. “Paying coupons of 8% to 10% in perpetuity could be quite challenging.” Liquidity, a concern for any company with little operating revenue beyond security sales, could tighten sharply in a Bitcoin downturn.
To short seller Jim Chanos, the non-cumulative variety of preferreds are “crazy” for institutions to buy — perpetual, non-redeemable, with dividends paid only at the issuer’s discretion. “If I don’t pay the dividends, they are not cumulative. I don’t have to pay them back,” he told Bloomberg TV in June. Chanos says Strategy’s effective leverage has plateaued and sees the preferred push as another way to juice it. He’s suggested shorting the stock while long Bitcoin, betting the premium will collapse.
In Strategy’s capital structure, these units sit above common stock but are subordinate to convertible bonds, lacking the protections of regular debt. Wall Street managers have tended to favor those convertible bonds, which are easier to hedge through market-neutral trades. The preferreds are typically harder to hedge, and retiring convertibles would remove a popular arbitrage vehicle.
The whole approach works only if Bitcoin stays valuable and investor confidence holds. If he’s right, Bitcoin could inch closer to being treated as mainstream financial collateral. If he’s wrong, his balance sheet will be a cautionary tale: what happens when you try to turn a volatile asset into an income stream—and the market stops believing.
Still, the danger may come from the broader market as digital-asset treasury companies pile on risk.
“I think there are some indications of a bubble in crypto treasury companies,” said Yuliya Guseva, who directs Rutgers Law School’s blockchain and fintech program. “If the market appetite dries up, then the model will no longer persist.”
Audi must secure jobs and production in Germany before building a factory in the US over President Donald Trump’s tariffs, the carmaker’s top labor official said.
The Volkswagen AG-owned brand is reviewing several options for setting up its own manufacturing hub in the US, where VW already operates one plant and is building another for the Scout nameplate. Audi’s labor leaders are willing to back an expansion in the country only if management gives long-term guarantees for jobs and output at home, said Jörg Schlagbauer, the company’s works council chief.
“We are not refusing to discuss the matter, but for capacity reasons we do not see any need to build a plant in the US at present,” Schlagbauer, who also is Audi’s deputy board chairman, told Bloomberg in emailed comments. “If we need a plant in the US for political reasons, it cannot be at the expense of employees and capacity utilization in Germany.”
Trump’s trade moves and his push to curtail support for EVs are hitting Volkswagen’s premium brands at a difficult time. While Audi and Porsche AG are under pressure to move production to the US because they lack plants there, lower demand in China and muted sales in Europe mean their factories at home are running below capacity, and labor leaders are wary about giving up more output.
Audi reached an agreement with employee representatives in March to cut 7,500 German positions by 2029 via buyouts and early retirement — in exchange for extending job security guarantees for remaining workers until 2033. The company is in the process of informing employees about the offers, though so far “no significant staff reductions” have taken place, a labor spokesperson said.
The Volkswagen AG-owned brand is reviewing several options for setting up its own manufacturing hub in the US, where VW already operates one plant and is building another for the Scout nameplate.
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