US Licenses Nvidia to Export Chips to China After CEO Meets Trump, FT Reports

Stocks

China–U.S. Trade War

Summary:

Nvidia had tailored the H20 chips specially for the Chinese market in order to comply with Biden-era AI chip export controls.

The U.S. commerce department has started issuing licenses to Nvidia to export its H20 chips to China after CEO Jensen Huang met President Donald Trump at the White House, the Financial Times reported on Friday.

The Financial Times cited a U.S. official as saying that the bureau of industry and security, the arm of the commerce department that oversees export controls, had begun to issue licenses for the H20.

Nvidia had tailored the H20 chips specially for the Chinese market in order to comply with Biden-era AI chip export controls.

This comes after the U.S. last month reversed an April ban on Nvidia selling the H20 chip to China.

Nvidia said in July that it was filing applications with the U.S. government to resume sales to China of its H20 graphics processing unit, and has been assured by the U.S. it will get the licenses soon.

Trump reversed course on the April restrictions after Huang visited the White House and directly lobbied the president, according to the report, but Nvidia was frustrated that the administration had not started issuing the licenses three weeks after the decision.

Huang visited the White House on Wednesday and held another meeting with the president and two days after the meeting, the commerce department started issuing the licenses, FT reported citing people familiar with the decision.

Nvidia had said last month that its products have no "backdoors" that would allow remote access or control after China raised concerns over potential security risks in the firm's H20 artificial intelligence chip.

A spokesperson for Nvidia declined comment while the U.S. Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment.

Source: Reuters

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Manuel

Cryptocurrency

This was the second most significant growth in supply among stablecoins with over $500 million in supply growth, lagging only Ethena Labs’ USDe, which grew 63.4% in the same period.

RLUSD has been in a strong growth trend since May, nearly doubling its supply as of July 31. The stablecoin’s market cap jumped from $309 million to $455.3 million between May and June, an over 47% increase. In August alone, it had already grown 3%.

Furthermore, RLUSD surpassed $11 billion in cumulative transfer volume in 2025. The stablecoin registered a new monthly all-time high in July, with $3.3 billion in volume across different venues, an amount 27% larger than June.

Notably, RLUSD has never dipped below $1 billion in monthly trading volume since April, when it crossed this threshold for the first time by registering $1.8 billion in volume.

The growth occurred in the same month that Ripple made efforts to increase RLUSD’s market share.

First, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse announced the company was seeking a national banking charter for RLUSD. In addition to the stablecoin’s registry with the New York Department of Financial Services, this would make RLUSD the first stablecoin under state and federal oversight in the US.

On July 9, Ripple announced BNY Mellon as its custodian partner.

The company then moved to a multi-pronged global strategy to expand RLUSD’s market share. In the United States, the Federal Reserve’s formal adoption of the ISO 20022 messaging standard rewarded Ripple’s positioning as the first blockchain-focused company to join the ISO 20022 Standards Body in 2020.

At the same time, Ripple is reportedly advancing a significant entry into the European market by making RLUSD MiCA-compliant, anchoring the effort with a strategic base in Luxembourg.

However, not everyone is convinced that RLUSD’s growth is organic. Blockchain investigator ZachXBT questioned if Ripple’s stablecoin user base was authentic, before deleting its social media post.

Voicing his concerns differently, the investigator said he trusts other stablecoin issuers “infinitely more than Ripple,” such as Circle, Paxos, and Tether.

Source: Cryptoslate

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Manuel

Political

Azerbaijan and Armenia signed a U.S.-brokered peace agreement on Friday during a meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump that would boost bilateral economic ties after decades of conflict.

The deal between the South Caucasus rivals - assuming it holds - would be a significant accomplishment for the Trump administration that is sure to rattle Moscow, which sees the region as within its sphere of influence.

"It's a long time - 35 years - they fought and now they're friends, and they're going to be friends for a long time," Trump said at a signing ceremony at the White House, where he was flanked by Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev and Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan.

Armenia and Azerbaijan have been at odds since the late 1980s when Nagorno-Karabakh, a mountainous Azerbaijani region mostly populated by ethnic Armenians, broke away from Azerbaijan with support from Armenia. Azerbaijan took back full control of the region in 2023, prompting almost all of the territory's 100,000 ethnic Armenians to flee to Armenia.

Trump said the two countries had committed to stop fighting, open up diplomatic relations and respect each other's territorial integrity.

The agreement includes exclusive U.S. development rights to a strategic transit corridor through the South Caucasus that the White House said would facilitate greater exports of energy and other resources.

Trump said the United States signed separate deals with each country to expand cooperation on energy, trade and technology, including artificial intelligence.

He said restrictions had also been lifted on defense cooperation between Azerbaijan and the United States.

Both leaders praised Trump for helping to end the conflict and said they would nominate him for the Nobel Peace Prize. "So who if not President Trump deserves the Nobel Peace Prize?" Aliyev said.

Trump has tried to present himself as a global peacemaker in the first months of his second term. The White House credits him with brokering a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand and sealing peace deals between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Pakistan and India.

However, he has not managed to end Russia's war in Ukraine or Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza.

U.S. officials said the agreement was hammered out during repeated visits to the region and would provide a basis for working toward a full normalization between the countries.

Senior administration officials told reporters the agreement marked the first end to several frozen conflicts on Russia's periphery since the end of the Cold War and said it would send a powerful signal to the entire region.

The peace deal could transform the South Caucasus, an energy-producing region neighboring Russia, Europe, Turkey and Iran that is criss-crossed by oil and gas pipelines but riven by closed borders and longstanding ethnic conflicts.

Armenia plans to award the U.S. exclusive special development rights for an extended period on the transit corridor, administration officials told Reuters this week. The so-called Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity has already drawn interest from nine companies, including three U.S. firms, one official said on condition of anonymity.

Daphne Panayotatos, with the Washington-based rights group Freedom Now, said it has urged the Trump administration to use the meeting with Aliyev to demand the release of some 375 political prisoners held in the country.

Azerbaijan, an oil-producing country that hosted the United Nations climate summit last November, has rejected Western criticism of its human rights record, describing it as unacceptable interference.

Source: Reuters

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Central Bank

Economic

Since the Federal Reserve's decision last month to hold interest rates steady, a shift appears underway at the U.S. central bank, with several Fed officials sounding increasingly uneasy about the labor market and signaling their openness to, if not impatience for, a rate cut as soon as September.

Their evolving stance may please President Donald Trump, who has pushed aggressively for lower interest rates all year. The reasons for it, including new data indicating a weakening labor market that Trump has claimed is "rigged," may not.

Labor market worries were at the heart of arguments put forward by Fed Governor Christopher Waller and Vice Chair Michelle Bowman when they dissented from the Fed's July 30 decision to leave short-term borrowing costs in the 4.25%-4.50% range, where they have been since December. The 9-2 majority signed off on a statement that characterized labor market conditions as solid.

Days later, they looked far less so.

"Concerning" was how Fed Governor Lisa Cook earlier this week described revisions to the government estimates that slashed job gains in May and June to what economists see as recession levels. The same report also showed employers added far fewer jobs than expected in July, and a tick up in the unemployment rate to 4.2%.

"The employment number did say that the risk on the employment side is much higher than it had been...I will definitely be looking carefully," said Atlanta Fed President Raphael Bostic.

Bostic said he continues to believe just one rate cut will be appropriate for 2025, and at least one other hawkish Fed policymaker felt the new data did not change the overall picture much.

But even as central bankers appear short of consensus for the need to ease policy, subtle shifts suggest policymakers are tilting more dovish than before.

"There are risks on both sides of our mandate, and when that happens, when you have risks on both sides, you have to take a balanced approach," St. Louis Fed President Alberto Musalem said Friday. That's a shift from his earlier expressions of deeper concern about not meeting the Fed's inflation mandate than on missing its full employment goal.

"I'm comfortable with the decision we made in July, but I am increasingly less comfortable with making that decision again and again," San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly said earlier this week.

There's still plenty of data to digest before the Fed's next policy-setting meeting September 16-17, including a read on consumer prices next week that will help shape policymakers' assessments of whether the Trump administration's new higher tariffs will mean persistently higher inflation, as hawks fear, or just a temporary bump, as doves have argued.

Financial markets reflect heavy bets that the policy rate will be at least half of a percentage point lower by year-end.

Source: Reuters

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

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Manuel

Cryptocurrency

Ethereum (ETH) surged past the $4,000 mark on Aug. 8, hitting its highest level this year after a sustained market rally that saw it gain nearly 50% in the past month.

Data from CryptoSlate shows the asset peaked at $4,047 during US trading hours. Notably, the last time ETH traded above $4,000 was in December 2024, when optimism around Donald Trump’s election victory fueled a wave of pro-crypto sentiment in the US.

Meanwhile, CoinGlass data reveals the latest rally caught bearish traders off guard. Short positions against ETH suffered losses totaling $134 million in the past 24 hours as prices defied expectations.

Institutional demand drives ETH

Ethereum’s breakout comes amid a surge in institutional interest in the digital asset for their treasury reserves.

Over the past month, major firms such as SharpLink and BitMine have accumulated significant ETH holdings and announced multi-billion-dollar purchase plans.

According to Strategic ETH Reserve data, these entities collectively hold over 3 million ETH—about 2.5% of the total supply—valued at more than $12 billion. BitMine leads with 833,100 ETH, worth approximately $5.2 billion.

Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, has expressed a cautious optimism regarding the increasing corporate interest in ETH.

While he welcomed the adoption, Buterin cautioned firms against overleveraging their ETH holdings.

According to Buterin:

“If you woke me up 3 years from now and told me that treasuries led to the downfall of ETH… my guess would be that they turned into an overleveraged game.”

In addition to these firms, the Ethereum network has also seen a surge in adoption via exchange-traded funds (ETFs), with a record $5 billion in inflows recorded in July.

According to SoSo Value data, the trend has continued into the new month, with the nine funds registering just two days of outflows in August compared to four days of outflows experienced by their Bitcoin counterparts.

Additionally, traditional financial powerhouses like BlackRock and Robinhood have expanded their activities around Ethereum, focusing on real-world asset (RWA) tokenization.

What’s next for Ethereum price?

Looking ahead, market optimism continues to rise along with expectations of Ethereum’s continued price growth.

Crypto bettors on Polymarket, the leading decentralized prediction platform, believe there is a 60% chance that ETH will exceed $5,000 by the end of the year. Meanwhile, 36% of traders believe it could reach $6,000, and 24% predict a rise to $7,000.

Notably, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes is more bullish about Ethereum’s price hitting $10,000 by the end of the year.

Meanwhile, BitMine’s projections suggest a much higher potential, estimating ETH’s implied price at $60,000.

Source: Cryptoslate

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Manuel

Economic

Imports into the United States fell more than expected in June as concerns around shifting tariff policies hit retailers, raising fears of fewer product options in stores for shoppers, data from the National Retail Federation showed on Friday.

WHY IT'S IMPORTANT

The data comes as several of U.S. President Donald Trump's sweeping tariffs went into effect this week. As of August 7, duties range from 10% to 50%, with India, Brazil, and Switzerland facing some of the highest rates.

Since April's "Liberation Day" announcement of a 10% baseline tariff, Trump has adjusted rates frequently. A temporary truce with China in May reduced tariffs to 30%, but new hikes resumed in July.

BY THE NUMBERS

U.S. ports covered by NRF's report handled 1.96 million 20-foot containers or its equivalent in June, which was down 8.4% year-over-year, but up 0.7% from May.

That was a bigger drop from the NRF forecast from a month ago. The trade body had then projected ports would handle 2.06 million TEU in June, up 5.9% from May but down 3.7% year over year.

Moreover, import cargo volume at major container ports in the U.S. is tentatively expected to end 2025 5.6% below 2024's volume, NRF's forecast showed on Friday.

CONTEXT

Apparel retailers, including Under Armour, Deckers Outdoor have reported tariff impacts in the past couple of months and are taking steps to diversify their supply chain to avoid tariffs on goods routed through or sourced from Southeast Asian countries like Vietnam.

KEY QUOTE

"Tariffs are beginning to drive up consumer prices, and fewer imports will eventually mean fewer goods on store shelves," NRF Vice President for Supply Chain and Customs Policy Jonathan Gold said.

"We need binding trade agreements that open markets by lowering tariffs, not raising them."

Tariffs will result in higher prices for U.S. consumers, less hiring, lower business investment and a slower economy, he added.

Source: Reuters

To stay updated on all economic events of today, please check out our Economic calendar

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Adam

Commodity

Here's a look at what happened in oil markets in the week of August 4-8 and what the focus will be in the days to come.

OVERVIEW: Oil prices are on track for steep weekly losses on mounting concerns over widening U.S. tariffs and news that U.S. President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin could meet as soon as next week to discuss the war in Ukraine. Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, trades around $66 a barrel, while the U.S. oil gauge West Texas Intermediate is around $63 a barrel. Futures are also pressured by concerns over a looming supply surplus after OPEC+ agreed on another supersize output hike for September.

MACRO: Trump's sweeping new tariffs on dozens of countries went into force on Thursday but diplomatic efforts are far from over, with trading partners lobbying for exemptions.

Meanwhile, a weaker-than-expected U.S. jobs report put a September interest-rate cut by the Federal Reserve back on the table. According to the CME Group's FedWatch tool, traders currently see a 89.4% chance that the U.S. central bank will cut its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points next month.

Trump's plan to nominate top economic adviser Stephen Miran to fill a vacancy on the Fed's Board of Governors would introduce a voice that challenges the conventional view around the impact of tariffs on inflation and economic growth, potentially marking a shift toward a more dovish monetary policy stance, market watchers said.

GEOPOLITICAL RISKS: A meeting between Trump and Putin could raise optimism around a peace deal in Ukraine, easing the geopolitical risk premium and potentially affecting Trump's secondary tariffs on India.

The President said this week he would double tariffs on New Delhi as part of a broader effort to target countries that buy Russian oil. However, the higher duties aren't set to take effect for another couple of weeks, leaving room for negotiations, analysts said.

"There is some hope that these secondary tariffs might never see the light of day, given the August 27 deadline leaves the door open for negotiations in the interim," said Kieran Tompkins, commodities economist at Capital Economics.

In this context, traders are also closely watching China, another big importer of Russian oil. However, "Trump seems to be shying away from imposing new punitive tariffs in view of the ongoing trade talks and the U.S.'s dependence on rare earths from China," analysts at Commerzbank said.

SUPPLY AND DEMAND: This week brought some encouraging demand signals, even as sentiment was weighed down by OPEC+'s decision to fully unwind its largest tranche of voluntary cuts much earlier than initially planned.

U.S. crude inventories fell by 3 million barrels last week against expectations of a 100,000-barrel build, sending positive signs about consumption trends in the world's largest crude consumer.

Also, top oil exporter Saudi Arabia raised the September price of its flagship Arab Light crude for Asian buyers, signaling confidence in the demand outlook as OPEC+ continues to boost production.

"Despite rising supply, Saudi Arabia appears to be finding sufficient buyers for its oil," Commerzbank analysts said, adding that Russian oil buyers might look for oil from other major supplies including Saudi Arabia due to U.S. pressure.

WHAT'S AHEAD: Market focus will remain on U.S. trade negotiations and Russian supply risks.

Oil prices could extend their decline if President Trump holds off on imposing stricter sanctions on Russia, according to Commerzbank's Carsten Fritsch. "Without tougher sanctions, oil prices could fall further as market participants gradually shift their focus to the threat of oversupply in the fall," the commodities analyst said.

In addition, the U.S. Energy Information Administration, OPEC, and the International Energy Agency will publish their monthly reports next week, with new forecasts for supply and demand.

Commerzbank expects the EIA to maintain its projection of stagnating U.S. oil production through the end of 2026 and reiterate expectations of an oversupplied market. The IEA is also likely to forecast a growing surplus, potentially amplified by OPEC+'s planned production hike in September. OPEC, by contrast, is expected to stick with its more bullish view based on stronger demand assumptions and a less pessimistic outlook on global supply.

On the macro front, investors will also focus on core CPI and PPI data for further clues on the Fed's rate path.