Trump Curbs Chinese Investment and Proceeds With Tariffs on Canada and Mexico

DeepSeek has reopened access to its core programming interface after nearly a three-week suspension, resuming a service key to wider adoption of an AI model that’s proven remarkably popular since its emergence last month.

The 20-month-old Chinese startup, which stunned Silicon Valley and markets in January with an AI platform that rivals OpenAI’s, said it’s again allowing customers to top up credits for use on its application programming interface. DeepSeek suspended top-ups in early February because of capacity shortages. While those have now resumed, server resources will remain strained during the daytime, a DeepSeek representative said in a verified company group chat on WeChat.

DeepSeek resumed top-ups the same day that Alibaba Group Holding Ltd launched a preview of its latest model, QwQ-Max, underscoring the deepening competition within China’s nascent AI industry. Alibaba pledged this week to invest US$53 billion (RM234.37 billion) over three years to bolster its cloud computing and AI infrastructure, in a major pivot for the e-commerce pioneer.

On Tuesday, Alibaba declared plans to open-source QwQ-Max, intensifying competition with DeepSeek as well as other developers from Baidu Inc to startups like Zhipu.

DeepSeek’s arrival reinvigorated the Chinese tech scene and triggered a rally in mainland and Hong Kong stocks.

Its services have been overwhelmed with demand since unveiling an artificial intelligence chatbot that it says can rival OpenAI’s ChatGPT and was developed at a fraction of the cost of competing products. Its models have since been adopted by a plethora of Chinese firms across multiple industries, even as foreign governments from Australia to the US move to block its usage over security concerns.

Last week, DeepSeek said it plans to release key code and data to the public, an unusual step to share more of its core technology than rivals such as OpenAI have done. That potentially escalates a race between the US and China to develop ever more advanced AI models.

Source: Theedgemarkets

On Wall Street, investors continue to question whether massive spending on AI is justified, as evident in the cautious mood ahead of Nvidia's earnings on Wednesday where analysts expect a whopping 72% increase in quarterly revenue.

A column chart of the income recorded by NVIDIA over the last year, with a forecast for its Q4 2025 fiscal year.

Source: Reuters

Source: Poundsterlinglive

Above: The election result breakdown. Image courtesy of Google.

Source: Poundsterlinglive

The European Union is about to walk back significant chunks of planned ESG regulations, amid a barrage of complaints that such rules are becoming a dead weight hampering EU efforts to compete with the US and Asia.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, has proposed that regulations covering everything from ESG reporting requirements to supply-chain management be watered down to protect business interests in the bloc, according to documents seen by Bloomberg. The final proposal is set to be made public on Wednesday.

The move follows intense pressure both from within and outside Europe to rein in environmental, social and governance legislation. The development has major implications for the future of ESG globally, with Europe accounting for well over 80% of the world’s ESG fund assets.

Germany and France, the EU’s two largest economies, have been lobbying hard for smaller and mid-sized companies to be excluded from the full scope of reporting requirements, as both countries react to faltering economic productivity. In France, a government spokesperson went so far as to characterize ESG corporate reporting rules as “hell” for the companies expected to comply.

Europe’s decision to scale back its ESG agenda comes as American companies enter a new age of deregulation under President Donald Trump. The 78-year-old has taken a sledgehammer to the green agenda of his predecessor, Joe Biden, and has made tariffs a cornerstone of US trade policy.

The EU has also faced more direct pressure from the US to rein in the scope of its ESG regulations. Newly confirmed US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick told Republican senators last month that he was willing to consider deploying “trade tools” to ensure American companies exposed to the EU market aren’t expected to comply with CSDDD.

The European Commission is now recommending that the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive, which was designed to expose companies to legal liability if their value chains were found to contain ESG breaches, be reined in considerably. That includes lower potential fines and a reduced obligation to monitor the ESG risks of business partners, suppliers and customers.

The Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism, which will put a levy on EU imports of goods like steel and cement from countries with less strict climate policies, will be softened so that domestic companies face a reduced reporting requirement.

The commission is also proposing that only firms with over 1,000 employees and annual revenue exceeding €450 million (RM2.08 billion) be subject to the full scope of both the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive and CSDDD. Doing so would exclude an estimated 85% of the companies originally targeted in CSRD and would be in line with German and French demands.

Meanwhile, a provision for so-called double materiality — a concept that requires companies to take into account not just the financial ESG risks they may face but also their environmental and social impact — looks to be intact, according to draft material seen by Bloomberg. Given the proposed cuts to CSDDD and CSRD, however, the provision would likely apply to fewer companies than originally intended.

A spokesperson for the commission declined to comment, citing a policy of not responding to leaks.

Lawmakers from the EU’s green bloc, meanwhile, were quick to denounce the plans.

“It is an illusion to think that dismantling sustainability laws will solve the structural problems of the economy,” said Anna Cavazzini, a green lawmaker who’s chair of the internal market committee, in an emailed comment.

She says Europe’s competitiveness problems are instead “due to the current China shock, to a lack of innovation, to high energy prices brought by the war of aggression against Ukraine, and to insufficient investment. They are certainly not due to the EU due diligence law, which is not even in force yet.”

The commission is due to unveil its proposal for the so-called omnibus legislation on Feb. 26, when the bloc will look at CSDDD, CSRD and the Taxonomy Regulation.

Maria Luis Albuquerque, the EU’s financial services commissioner, said in an interview last month that there’s room for adjustments to ESG rules, while noting that outright deregulation isn’t the goal.

It’s about “adjusting the pace” while “maintaining the anchor”, she said then.

But civil society groups are now questioning that characterisation.

The planned rollback of ESG regulations looks “reckless,” said Maria van der Heide, head of EU policy at nonprofit ShareAction. “Sustainability laws designed to tackle the most pressing crises — climate breakdown, human rights abuses, corporate exploitation — are being crossed out behind closed doors and at record speed. This is not simplification; it’s pure deregulation.”

Source: Theedgemarkets