Trump's AI Plan Supports Antitrust Enforcement, DOJ Official Says

Political

Stocks

Summary:

Antitrust enforcers during President Joe Biden's administration expressed similar concerns about AI competition, and scrutinized Big Tech partnerships with AI startups.

U.S. antitrust enforcers are on guard against anticompetitive behavior in the artificial intelligence sector as part of the Trump administration's plan to cement U.S. AI dominance, a Department of Justice official said in New York on Thursday.

Protecting competition in the industry supports innovation, Assistant Attorney General Gail Slater said at a conference at Fordham University, signaling that President Donald Trump's antitrust enforcers are looking out for anticompetitive conduct and consolidation.

"The competitive dynamics of each layer of the AI stack and how they interrelate, with a particular eye towards exclusionary behavior that forecloses access to key inputs and distribution channels, are legitimate areas for antitrust inquiry," she said.

Access to data is one area the DOJ will monitor, Slater said. A judge in Washington recently ordered Alphabet's Google to share some of its search data with competitors including AI companies, in order to boost competition with its online search engine. Google has said it will appeal.

Slater said that demand for data could drive mergers or business combinations between companies and their suppliers, known as vertical integration, "especially in industries where downstream businesses may have access to valuable and sensitive data like healthcare data."

"We may also increasingly see the desire to acquire data, or to deprive rivals of data, play a role in driving transactions," she said.

Slater also said that open source AI models can boost competition, something Trump's AI action plan envisioned as a way to spread American technology.

"Of course, a truly open-source model must be one that is not unilaterally maintained by a single vendor that exerts unwarranted influence and impose restrictions," she said.

Antitrust enforcers during President Joe Biden's administration expressed similar concerns about AI competition, and scrutinized Big Tech partnerships with AI startups.

Source: Reuters

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Manuel

Cryptocurrency

Political

The Securities and Exchange Commission has paved the way for a flurry of new crypto-related exchange-traded funds.

The SEC late Wednesday announced that it approved generic listing standards for commodity-based exchange-traded products, fast-tracking the approval for crypto funds. By approving the standards across Nasdaq, Cboe BZX, and NYSE Arca, the SEC has eliminated the need for individual approvals under Section 19(b) of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Prior to the new guidance, spot crypto fund issuers were subject to a lengthy application process that required public comment and SEC review, which is why most of the crypto ETFs that have launched to date covered covered bitcoin and ether, the two largest cryptocurrencies by market cap.

The streamlined approach is expected to shorten launch timelines, cut administrative costs, and and make more cryptocurrencies available to investors in an ETF wrapper. The new standards came with the approval of the first multi-crypto asset ETF in the U.S., the Grayscale Digital Large Cap Fund, or GLDC, which in addition to crypto and ether holds XRP, solana and cardano.

Why This Matters to You

Investors will likely see a tidal wave of new crypto ETF launches starting in October, with all manner of digital assets that have never before landed in an investment vehicle. Think memecoin ETFs that hold doge and trump, and multi-crypto asset funds aimed at delivering on a theme like tokenization.

The main listing criteria for a crypto ETF will be the existence of a futures market for the underlying asset on a regulated exchange, such as Coinbase, for a period of at least six months, according to Bloomberg analyst James Seyffart. Crypto ETF offerings that fall outside the framework can still go through the traditional approval process via individual filings.

The latest changes are seen by the crypto industry as a step forward for continued regulatory clarity on crypto from the SEC and the Trump administration. They remove a boundary between firms seeking to put a range of crypto assets into a new product and investors who might be interested in such products.

The mass approval of pending crypto ETF applications had been predicted by Seyffart and other experts. "We're gonna be off to the races in a matter of weeks," Seyffart posted on X following the SEC approval of the new framework.

Bitwise Chief Investment Officer Matt Hougan noted that there was a massive increase in ETF listings when generic listing standards were created for traditional ETFs in the past. "The pace of ETF launches rose from ~117/year to ~370/year," he posted on X.

Digital assets platform and services provider Galaxy says 10 tokens currently meet the criteria for an expedited listing: Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Solana, Litecoin, Chainlink, Stellar, Avalanche, Shiba Inu, Polkadot and Hedera. (A dogecoin ETF launched today.) ADA and XRP will also qualify shortly, according to Galaxy. Several applications to launch ETFs holding those coins have already been submitted to the SEC.

The SEC approved spot bitcoin ETFs in Jan. 2024, more than 10 years after Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss first submitted an application for one. Ether ETFs were approved that July. Bitcoin ETFs have about $150 billion in assets under management, while ether ETFs have just under $30 billion.

Source: Investopedia

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Adam

Economic

The highest US tariff among developed nations dealt a severe blow to Swiss exports there, according to the first reading since the 39% levy took effect, but increased shipments to other countries could offset some of the fallout.

Foreign sales to America excluding gold, adjusted for seasonal swings, were 22% lower in August than in July. That includes significantly fewer watch exports. Imports from the world’s biggest economy held steady.

The US trade deficit with Switzerland narrowed by roughly a third to 2.06 billion francs ($2.6 billion), from 2.93 billion francs the previous month. August’s reading is the second lowest since 2020, according to Bloomberg calculations based on Swiss customs office data.

Gold exports to the US collapsed even more markedly, dropping 99% compared to July, to 0.3 tons.

Swiss Exports to US Collapsed in First Month of 39% Tariff_1

The significant imbalance in goods trade was the reason for US President Donald Trump’s Aug. 1 announcement of the tariff, which took effect on Aug. 8.

Still, total Swiss exports were largely unfazed by the hit to US trade. Higher shipments to European countries — including France, Austria and Poland — as well as Canada and Mexico helped to offset the dent, resulting in a retreat of just 1% from a month earlier.

Goods on which the US tariff applies saw significant declines. Compared to July, Switzerland exported 8.6% fewer watches. Pharmaceuticals — so far exempt from the levy — saw a 1.3% decrease.

A last-ditch attempt by the Swiss government in early August to sway the US President proved unsuccessful, though talks have continued since and Bern is still pushing to secure a lower rate. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week that Washington will “probably get a deal done with Switzerland” — though he didn’t provide details.

Negotiations with the US are a balancing act for Swiss negotiators, especially on the issue of agriculture which is domestically sensitive due to a belief in self-reliance. In an interview on Wednesday, the head of the Swiss farmers’ lobby rejected ideas to allow American producers to import more beef or poultry.

While the Swiss economy has shown resilience so far, the government said that it expects slower growth this year due to the US levies. Switzerland is trying to diversify its dependencies, including with a new free trade agreement with the South American Mercosur bloc that was signed this week.

Source: Bloomberg

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Manuel

Cryptocurrency

Political

Senator Elizabeth Warren pressed Attorney General Pam Bondi for details on whether Binance complies with its 2023 settlement agreement, as Bloomberg News reported on Sept. 18.

Warren cited inadequate responses from federal prosecutors regarding the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in a letter co-authored by Democratic senators Mazie Hirono and Richard Blumenthal.

The letter demanded confirmation of Binance’s adherence to “ongoing requirements” from the $4.3 billion deal that resolved money-laundering and sanctions violations.

The senators criticized the Justice Department for failing to “meaningfully answer” questions Warren initially raised in May about settlement compliance.

Earlier this month, prosecutors confirmed Binance had paid required financial penalties but noted the company maintains continuing obligations under the agreement, including compliance program improvements.

However, the lawmakers wrote that “this response did not confirm whether or not Binance was, in fact, complying with these ongoing requirements.”

Monitor removal under consideration

The inquiry comes as prosecutors are weighing whether to remove Binance’s court-appointed compliance monitor, a key component of the 2023 settlement.

Authorities installed the monitor to oversee the exchange’s adherence to anti-money laundering and sanctions compliance requirements.

Warren’s letter also sought details on interactions between Binance and President Donald Trump administration officials, reflecting concerns about the exchange’s connections to World Liberty Financial.

Binance’s late 2023 agreement with federal authorities resolved criminal charges related to facilitating transactions for sanctioned entities and failing to implement adequate anti-money laundering programs.

The deal required the exchange to pay $4.3 billion in penalties and accept ongoing regulatory oversight.

The settlement marked one of the largest enforcement actions against a cryptocurrency firm, as prosecutors sought to address compliance failures that allowed illicit financial activities to flourish on the platform.

Also, as a part of the settlement, Binance founder Changpeng Zhao served a four-month prison sentence. He was released in September 2024 and sought a presidential pardon in May.

The senators’ pressure campaign stressed ongoing congressional scrutiny of cryptocurrency regulation, despite the recent regulatory moves led by Trump signing the GENIUS Act into law.

Source: Cryptoslate

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Adam

Economic

Since being laid off from her human resources job in the hospitality industry in May, Sashi Cayard has tried it all: walking into businesses to hand over her resume in person, applying to a slew of positions online, venturing outside of her industry, and contacting hiring managers directly.

Still, nothing. The 26-year-old from Miami even tried appealing to politicians for help.

“The job market is so bad that when I went to Washington, D.C., I dropped off copies of my resume to my state representatives and was like, ‘Hey, can you help me find a job? There are no jobs in your district, and half the postings you see are ghost postings,’” Cayard said in a video posted to TikTok in August.

She never heard back.

Now, some would say — finally — that economic data is catching up to what job seekers like Cayard have known for months about the state of the US job market. The unemployment rate, which had been hovering between 4% and 4.2% since May 2024, broke out of that narrow range in August to hit 4.3%, the highest level since October 2021. Revisions to jobs data showed the country actually shed 13,000 positions in June, the first monthly net job loss since December 2020 while adding nearly a million fewer jobs than initially reported for the year prior through March 2025.

“If you are currently employed and you’re happy with your employment, you’re probably feeling OK because that layoff rate is still pretty low,” said Allison Shrivastava, an economist at the Indeed Hiring Lab. “But if you’re trying to get into the labor market or switch jobs, you’re going to be having a really difficult time.”

Cayard, who has a bachelor’s degree in hospitality and tourism management and a master’s degree in human resources management, started applying for other roles immediately after losing her last position. She was especially concerned about healthcare: Staying on her employer’s plan through COBRA costs around $800 a month. So far, she’s put in over 500 applications, but she's only reached the interview stage for two jobs.

So it goes in a no-hire, no-fire job market: The employed are staying at jobs they might otherwise leave rather than face a brutal market, and the unemployed are finding they’re unable to get a foot in the door as companies keep from hiring due to economic uncertainty.

“Applying for jobs is a full-time job,” Cayard said. “People ask, ‘What are you doing?’ I’m trying to just keep on keeping on.’”

A dizzying fall

There’s reason to be concerned. The share of out-of-work Americans who have been unemployed for more than 27 weeks reached 25.7% in August, a level last seen in early 2022 before job openings reached a record high amid a red-hot labor market.

“Jobs aren’t being shed, necessarily — layoff rates are still pretty low — but we aren’t adding a lot of jobs to the economy, and people also aren’t quitting their jobs,” Shrivastava said.

Workers are coming off from the highs of an extremely strong post-pandemic job market, making this fall particularly dizzying, Shrivastava noted.

Meanwhile, unemployment is nowhere near where it was during the pandemic, inflation is far below where it was in 2022, and consumer spending remains strong, though that’s being driven by high-income consumers, leaving questions on how long these bad feelings may last.

Sentiment about finding a job, meanwhile, is already plummeting. The New York Fed’s measure of workers’ perceived probability of landing a job after losing their current position is at its lowest level, according to survey data going back to June 2013. The University of Michigan’s survey of consumers, meanwhile, shows the share of respondents expecting higher unemployment in the next 12 months is at its highest since the Great Recession.

For those stuck searching for work, the current reality is a roller coaster of applications that seems to lead people off a cliff. Some postings are “ghost jobs” that never appear to get filled at all. And some applications are reviewed by AI, meaning an hour of tailoring a resume and cover letter may result in a rejection in minutes.

Felicia Enriquez, a 47-year-old in Los Angeles, has been unemployed for about 14 months after unexpectedly losing her job as a paralegal and is consistently looking for work. She’s picked up freelance work as a journalist to keep herself busy, but she’s still six months behind on rent.

While initially looking for work as a paralegal, she’s struggled to find a position because she doesn’t speak Spanish, which she finds is often a requirement in her area. So she broadened her search and recently applied for a position at CVS.

“I’m willing to take anything at this point,” Enriquez said.

Tyler Tiede, a 27-year-old in Rochester, N.Y., is also deep in the job hunt after stepping away from his software engineering position in late November for a personal hiatus. Tiede, who has a physics degree, was casually looking for work right away, but ramped up his search in June.

In the beginning, he was only applying for software engineering positions — competing with both computer science graduates who can’t find work and recently laid-off tech workers. After applying to hundreds of software engineering roles, he’s started to look for roles as a sales engineer or product engineer and is pivoting to IT and system administrator work. He’s also delivering orders through Uber Eats and DoorDash.

Tiede is lucky to have a support system behind him, including his girlfriend, he said. But being unemployed can challenge “your opinion of yourself on a day-to-day basis.”

“I’ve tracked, like, my last 100 applications, and as of a couple weeks ago, I think 60% of them just never even replied to me, ever, and then 40% rejected me,” Tiede said. “You either don’t hear back anything, or they just say, ‘Oh, we went with someone else.’ You don’t really get real feedback on the reason why.”

Shrivastava said she can understand workers’ frustration with a frozen job market. She recommended that people out of work use this time to upskill and leverage their network where possible.

“You’re probably not going to be as penalized as you would be in a thriving labor market for having gaps in your resume,” Shrivastava said. “People are pretty understanding, given that we’re kind of all experiencing the economy together.”

Source: finance.yahoo

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Manuel

Central Bank

Political

President Donald Trump has asked the US Supreme Court to let him fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook while she fights his attempt to oust her, pulling the justices into a high-profile legal battle with major implications for the US central bank’s independence.

The Justice Department asked the court on Thursday to at least temporarily pause a Washington federal judge’s ruling that has allowed Cook to remain in her position for now. The emergency request came after the Fed held its most recent meeting earlier this week, which Cook participated in.

Trump said last month he was firing Cook after Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte accused her of fraudulently listing homes in Michigan and Georgia as a “primary residence” when she obtained mortgages in 2021 to secure more favorable terms on loans. Cook has denied committing mortgage fraud and has remained on the job.

US Solicitor General D. John Sauer, the Trump administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer, wrote in Thursday’s application that the lower court’s ruling represented “yet another case of improper judicial interference with the President’s removal authority.”

Even though the Supreme Court previously identified the Fed as “uniquely structured” in the context of fights over Trump’s efforts to fire members of other independent agencies, Sauer wrote that courts had no role to play in reviewing a president’s rationale for firing a governor “for cause,” which is the standard under US law.

A spokesperson for Cook’s lawyers did not immediately return a request for comment on Thursday.

The Justice Department’s latest move comes after a federal appeals court voted 2-1 ahead of the Fed meeting to leave Cook in place for now. The appeals court’s order didn’t address the underlying claims of mortgage fraud against Cook, and also did not reference reports over the weekend that loan documents for Cook’s Georgia home appear to contradict Pulte’s claim, showing that she told the lender the property was a vacation home.

Fed Vote

With Cook in attendance and voting with the majority, the Fed’s policy committee on Wednesday lowered interest rates by a quarter percentage point in an effort to support a weakening labor market. Analysts had expected as many as four dissents, but in the end only Stephen Miran, a Trump ally who was sworn in Tuesday morning, voted against the move. He preferred a half-point cut.

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority has largely sided with Trump this year in allowing him to fire federal officials, but the dispute over Cook’s position at the Fed is an untested arena that carries potentially monumental consequences for the US economy.

Sauer wrote in the government’s application to the justices that Cook’s case should fail at several steps. Her service as a Fed governor wasn’t a “property interest” that gave her grounds to sue, he said. In addition, social media posts by Trump and another US official announcing the accusations against Cook qualified as “due process” and the allegation itself was “cause” to fire her under US law.

The lower court’s decision “would invite judicial micromanagement,” Sauer argued.

US District Judge Jia Cobb sided with Cook and let her continue working on Sept. 9 while she sued to keep her job. The judge found that Cook, appointed by former President Joe Biden, was likely to win her claim and that Trump didn’t satisfy the requirement that her removal be “for cause” with unproven allegations of mortgage fraud before her time in office.

‘For Cause’

Cobb, also a Biden-era nominee, wrote that when Congress adopted the “for cause” language in the Federal Reserve Act, they intended for it to relate to a governor’s behavior in office and “whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties.”

Laws that do describe “for cause” generally define the term as encompassing three possibilities: inefficiency; neglect of duty; and malfeasance, meaning wrongdoing, in office.

Cook has alleged that Trump’s move to oust her is part of a politically motivated pattern. The Justice Department has agreed during the legal proceedings that policy differences alone do not qualify as cause under the law. Trump has repeatedly and publicly expressed his frustration with the board’s pace in reducing interest rates and lambasted Fed Chair Jerome Powell.

Cobb also held that Trump likely violated Cook’s constitutional right to due process by attempting to fire her via a social media post that did not give her a meaningful opportunity to challenge the allegations.

The Justice Department swiftly appealed Cobb’s decision to the US Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit and asked that court to let Trump remove Cook ahead of the Fed meeting that took place on Sept. 16-17. The three-judge panel released its decision rebuffing the administration’s request on Sept. 15. Government lawyers didn’t immediately ask the justices to step in before the meeting began, but a White House official said at the time that the administration still intended to take the fight to the Supreme Court.

The majority of the appeals court in Washington indicated it was basing its decision on the due process question, finding that Cook was likely to win at least on that issue. The judges didn’t address the merits of her arguments for why Trump didn’t have “cause” to fire her.

Source: Bloomberg

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Adam

Economic

Beijing has reportedly halted purchases of yet another AI chip from Nvidia, freezing it out of the market completely — a move industry experts say reflects the country’s growing confidence in domestic chip makers and an attempt at gaining trade leverage.

It was only a few months ago when Jensen Huang announced, from China, that the U.S. would allow it to resume sales of its made-for-China H20 graphics processing units, reversing a previous halt on their exports.

At the time, Huang had also revealed the company’s new RTX Pro GPU for the Chinese market, which had been tailored for AI smart factories and logistics.

But Nvidia’s fortunes flipped in August, when it was reported that regulators in China had begun mandating tech firms to halt purchases of Nvidia’s H20s pending a national security review.

Now that the mandate has been expanded to Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000D chip, rendering the company unable to sell any products to Chinese customers, according to a report by the Financial Times on Wednesday.

That comes after Chinese regulators on Monday said that Nvidia had violated the country’s anti-monopoly law, as per a preliminary probe, adding they would continue their investigation.

While the exact motives of China’s actions against Nvidia remain unclear, tech and geopolitical analysts say the developments show China has become more confident in its own ability to make AI chips and is wielding that as a leverage against the U.S.

Another Nvidia chip crumbles

The reported reasons for Chinese regulators’ intervention in the H20 had been the need for a national security review over concerns that Nvidia chips could be outfitted with certain tracking systems — an idea proposed by American lawmakers.

Experts had characterized the move as part of Beijing’s efforts aimed at encouraging Chinese AI companies to explore domestic alternatives, though they forecast that exports would eventually be cleared due to high demand from Chinese AI players.

Meanwhile, some Chinese AI companies had indicated they would order tens of thousands of the RTX Pro 6000D, and had started testing and verification work with Nvidia’s server suppliers up until they were asked to cease such activities, according to FT’s reporting.

The country’s regulators, however, blocked access to those Nvidia chips after summoning domestic AI chip makers and concluding they had reached performance comparable to the U.S. company’s made-for-China products, according to the FT.

However, performance isn’t the only challenge facing China’s AI chips. Analysts contend that capacity is also a major barrier, with the domestic industry still unable to produce enough chips at scale.

Reporting from the FT suggests Beijing has also become more confident in this area, with local chipmakers seeking to triple the country’s total output of AI processors next year.

“All these recent actions show that China has much more confidence in their domestic sector than they used to,” said Qingyuan Lin, a senior analyst covering China semiconductors at Bernstein.

China’s chip progress

There are signs that China’s AI ecosystem has been progressing.

Chinese tech giant Huawei announced Thursday new AI compute infrastructure using its in-house Ascend chips, claiming they would be the “world’s most powerful.”

Research firm SemiAnalysis found in April that Huawei’s latest-generation CloudMatrix system was able to outperform Nvidia’s competing AI compute system on some metrics — despite each Ascend chip delivering only about one-third the performance of an Nvidia processor. Huawei built its advantage by having five times as many chips linked together.

Meanwhile, Chinese AI start-up DeepSeek had hinted last month that its latest AI model would be compatible with the country’s “next generation” homegrown AI chips. China’s Alibaba and Baidu have reportedly started using internally designed chips to help train their AI models, partly replacing those made by Nvidia.

Still, analysts are skeptical about China’s ability to cut its dependence on Nvidia chips.

“In terms of China’s domestic chip preparedness, I believe it is misleading to suggest the country can advance AI at a current level solely with domestic alternatives and without NVIDIA’s systematic offerings,” Ray Wang, research director for semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at Futurum Group, told CNBC.

Seeking leverage?

Experts, while agreeing that China has become more confident in its ability to counter Nvidia, suggest the country could be using access to its market as leverage in trade negotiations with the U.S.

“The move is likely to be a negotiation tactic as part of a broader set of discussions involving other topics including tariffs. China is no doubt trying to encourage and establish silicon self sovereignty, while also getting the best possible chip in the meantime,” AJ Kourabi, analyst at SeminAlysis, told CNBC.

The U.S. has indicated that it might allow even more advanced Nvidia chips than the H20 into the Chinese market.

Under the Joe Biden administration, export controls on advanced chips had been increasingly tightened with the aim of blocking China’s access to the best American technology. That trend after accelerating initially under the Trump administration is now reversing.

According to Reva Goujon, director at Rhodium Group, by rejecting the H20 and RTX Pro, Beijing could be looking to create an opportunity to negotiate access to more advanced GPUs.

She added that it’s likely not a coincidence that it comes amid other leverage-building by China this week, referring to its recent anti-dumping investigation into imports of certain analog chips from the U.S.

“As Beijing tests Trump’s transactionalism, it has to build up leverage of its own,” she said.