Friday, July 24, 2026

Trump is rebuilding his tariff wall, one accusation at a time. New US import taxes of 10% to 12.5% take effect Friday on goods from 60 trading partners, including the European Union, that the administration says have gone soft on enforcing bans on forced labor. The duties replace a temporary 10% tariff that expired after the Supreme Court struck down his "reciprocal" levies in February, and some countries, including India, tightened enforcement to qualify for the lower rate (via NPR, via The Washington Post).

The Justice Department blinked in a fight with the press. Prosecutors withdrew subpoenas demanding testimony and phone records from New York Times reporters who wrote about security concerns surrounding Trump's Qatari-donated Air Force One, retreating after US District Judge Arun Subramanian grilled a government lawyer over the "profound First Amendment" problems the demands raised. The government also apologized for sweeping up phone records belonging to one reporter's mother and two journalists' spouses, calling it an honest mistake (via NPR, via Axios).

Intel just posted the kind of quarter that felt impossible a year ago. The chipmaker's revenue jumped 25% to $16.1 billion, its fastest growth since 2011, and adjusted earnings of 42 cents a share doubled the 21 cents analysts expected, sending shares up about 4% after hours. CEO Lip-Bu Tan credited "unprecedented demand for compute" as his turnaround finally shows up in the numbers (via CNBC).

General Motors keeps beating Wall Street and daring it to doubt the streak. The automaker earned an adjusted $3.57 a share on $48 billion in revenue, topping forecasts on stronger pricing and higher volumes, and raised its full-year profit outlook for the second time this year (via CNBC).

Wall Street's AI trade got a reality check. The S&P 500 sank 1.21% to 7,408.30 and the Nasdaq tumbled 2.15% to 25,137.69 on Thursday, with the Dow off 507 points, or 0.97%, to 51,711.65, as a 7% drop in Alphabet and a 14% plunge in Tesla spooked investors already nervous about ballooning AI spending (via CNBC).

Surging oil made a bad day worse, and Friday opened trying to steady. Crude climbed on escalating Middle East conflict, deepening the selloff, but stock futures pointed higher Friday morning as markets attempted to stabilize even with Trump's new forced-labor tariffs taking effect (via Bloomberg).

The US-China AI fight just turned into an accusation of outright theft. White House science chief Michael Kratsios said China's Moonshot AI trained on banned Nvidia GB300 chips accessed in Thailand and "distilled" Anthropic's Fable model to build its new Kimi K3, while Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned that sanctions and Entity List designations are "on the table" for firms that cross into IP theft (via CNBC, via Bloomberg).

What set off the alarm is a model that suddenly looks competitive. Moonshot's Kimi K3, an open-source system with 2.8 trillion parameters, closes the gap with the best American models and beats them on some benchmarks, including Anthropic's Fable 5 and OpenAI's GPT-5.6 Sol (via CNBC).

The WNBA's biggest weekend is in Chicago, and the stars are already out. All-Star Friday brings the skills challenge and a 3-point contest headlined by top pick Azzi Fudd and league 3-point leader Marina Mabrey at Wintrust Arena, a warmup for Saturday's game at the United Center after Cynthia Cooper and Teresa Weatherspoon drafted their rival squads (via ESPN, via ESPN).

The Dodgers keep mashing their way through July. Los Angeles put up another big night in Thursday's slate while the Yankees squeezed out a low-scoring win, keeping baseball's pennant races humming right up to the weekend (via ESPN).

Christopher Nolan sent audiences back to ancient Greece and they showed up in force. "The Odyssey" opened to a stunning $124 million, the third-biggest domestic debut of the year and Nolan's largest global launch ever, proof that his brand of big-screen spectacle still moves tickets (via Variety, via Variety).

The theater business is having a comeback it barely dared predict. After a rough stretch, 2026's box office is climbing on a run of must-see originals and sequels, from Nolan's epic to the summer's breakout hits, as studios and exhibitors lean into an audience that keeps coming back to cinemas (via Variety).