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President Donald Trump on Monday placed a 25% tax on goods imported from Japan and South Korea, citing persistent trade imbalances with the two crucial U.S. allies in Asia. Trump provided notice of the tariffs to begin on Aug. 1 by posting letters on Truth Social that were addressed to the leaders of both countries. The letters warned both countries to not retaliate by increasing their own import taxes, or else the Trump administration would further increase tariffs. If for any reason you decide to raise your Tariffs, then, whatever the number you choose to raise them by, will be added onto the 25% that we charge, Trump wrote in the letters to Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung. The letters were not the final word from Trump on tariffs, so much as another episode in a global economic drama in which the U.S. president has placed himself at the center. His moves have raised fears that economic growth will slow to a muddle, if not make the U.S. and other nations more vulnerable to a recession. But Trump is confident that tariffs are necessary to bring back domestic manufacturing and fund the tax cuts he signed into law last Friday. The S&P 500 stock index was down nearly 1% in Monday afternoon trading, while the interest charged on the 10-year U.S. Treasury noted had increased to nearly 4.39%, a figure that could translate into elevated rates for mortgages and auto loans. Trump has declared an economic emergency to unilaterally impose the taxes, suggesting they are remedies for past trade deficits even though many U.S. consumers have come to value autos, electronics and other goods from Japan and South Korea. But it’s unclear what he gains strategically against Chinaanother stated reason for the tariffsby challenging two crucial partners in Asia who could counter China’s economic heft. These tariffs may be modified, upward or downward, depending on our relationship with your Country, Trump wrote in both letters. Because the new tariff rates go into effect in roughly three weeks, Trump is setting up a period of possibly tempestuous talks among the U.S. and its trade partners to reach new frameworks. Trump initially sparked hysteria in the financial markets by announcing tariff rates on dozens of countries, including 24% on Japan and 25% on South Korea. In order to calm the markets, Trump unveiled a 90-day negotiating period during which goods from most countries were taxed at a baseline 10%. The 90-day negotiating period technically ends before Wednesday, even as multiple administration officials and Trump himself suggested the three-week period before implementation is akin to overtime for additional talks. Administration officials have said Trump is relying on tariff revenues to help offset the tax cuts he signed into law on July 4, a move that could shift a greater share of the federal tax burden onto the middle class and poor as importers would likely pass along much of the cost of the tariffs. Trump has warned major retailers such as Walmart to simply eat the higher costs, instead of increasing prices in ways that could intensify inflation. Trump’s team promised 90 deals in 90 days, but his negotiations so far have produced only two trade frameworks. His trade framework with Vietnam was clearly designed to box out China from routing its America-bound goods through that country, by doubling the 20% tariff charged on Vietnamese imports on anything traded transnationally. The quotas in the United Kingdom framework would spare that nation from the higher tariff rates being charged on steel, aluminum and autos, still British goods would generally face a 10% tariff. The United States ran a $69.4 billion trade imbalance in goods with Japan in 2024 and a $66 billion imbalance with South Korea, according to the Census Bureau. According to Trump’s letters, autos would be tariffed separately at the standard 25% worldwide, while steel and aluminum imports would be taxed on 50%. The broader 25% rates on Japan and South Korea would apply to goods not already covered by the specific sectoral tariffs. This is not the first time that Trump has tangled with Japan and South Korea on tradeand the new tariffs suggest his past deals made during his first term failed to deliver on his administration’s own hype. In 2018, during Trump’s first term, his administration celebrated a revamped trade agreement with South Korea as a major win. And in 2019, Trump signed a limited agreement with Japan on agricultural products and digital trade that at the time he called a huge victory for Americas farmers, ranchers and growers. Josh Boak, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
AI cloud computing giant CoreWeave announced on Monday it has signed a deal to acquire Core Scientific, a data center provider, in an all-stock deal valued at $9 billion. The news sent share of both companies tumbling in early trading on Monday, with CoreWeave (NASDAQ: CRWV) slightly recovering by midday, down almost 3%, while Core Scientific (NASDAQ:CORZ) remained in the red, down a staggering 16%. However, Core Scientific stock is still up about 25% since the deal was first reported by the Wall Street Journal last month, as noted by Investopedia. The deal, which is expected to close by the fourth quarter of 2025subject to both regulatory approval, and approval from Core Scientific’s stockholderswill enable CoreWeave to bring Core Scientific’s nationwide data center infrastructure in-house, so it can support large-scale artificial intelligence development as it races to compete in the AI boom. “This acquisition accelerates our strategy to deploy AI and HPC workloads at scale,” CoreWeave’s CEO and co-founder Michael Intrator said in a statement. “Verticalizing the ownership of Core Scientifics high-performance data center infrastructure enables CoreWeave to significantly enhance operating efficiency and de-risk our future expansion, solidifying our growth trajectory. Owning this foundational layer of our platform will enhance our performance and expertise as we continue helping customers unleash AIs full potential.” Both companies have a history of working together, and the deal follows a previous merger bid last year, which Core Scientific rejected on the grounds it was too low, per the Journal. The deal is forecast to save CoreWeave some $10 billion in future leasing contract costs from Core Scientific, according to Yahoo Finance. CoreWeave and Core Scientific by the numbers CoreWeave went public this past March in a highly anticipated initial public offering, which CNBC called the biggest venture-backed IPO for a U.S. company since 2021, following a long lapse of tech IPOs. In its March prospectus filing, the company, whose largest customer is Microsoft, reported a net loss of $863 million, with revenue growth of 737% last year to $1.92 billion. It has a market capitalization of $76.73 billion. Core Scientific reported earnings for the first quarter of 2025 totaling $79.53 million in quarterly revenue, which fell short of analyst estimates of $92.04 million, although its earnings per share (EPS) of -$0.10 beat the street’s estimates of -$0.12. It has a market capitalization of $4.46 billion.
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E-Commerce
Isomorphic Labs, the AI-powered drug company spun out of Googles DeepMind, just announced that its getting ready to begin human clinical trials of drugs designed by AI. In an interview with Fortune on July 6, Colin Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs president and Google DeepMinds chief business officer, shared that the company is currently gearing up to start human trials. This milestone will mark the first time that Google DeepMinds breakthrough AI drug discovery system, AlphaFold3, will be put into practice on actual patients. The news comes as tech companies and research institutions are rolling out new applications for AI in medicine at a frantic pace. Early this month, Microsoft released a report claiming that its new AI Diagnostic Orchestrator is around four times more accurate than a human physician when it comes to diagnosing complex issues. On the same day, researchers at Northwestern Medicine published a study on a new AI-powered device that may revolutionize cancer screening. Now, heres what to know about Isomorphic Labs’ next major step in AI-powered drug development: What is Isomorphic Labs? Isomorphic Labs is a London-based drug developer thats owned and operated by Alphabet Inc. The company was founded in 2021 as an offshoot from DeepMind, Googles multidisciplinary AI research arm. In multiple interviews, Isomorphic Labs executives have explained the companys intimidating goal: to eventually solve all diseases using AI. This isnt about developing therapeutics for a particular indication or a particular target, Max Jaderberg, chief AI officer at Isomorphic Labs, explained in an interview this April. Its really thinking about, how do we create a really general drug design engine with AIsomething that we can apply to not just a single target, or even a single modality, but we can apply this again and again across any different disease area? What is AlphaFold AI? The key unlock driving Isomorphic Labs expansive goal is its trailblazing AlphaFold AI system, a discovery that earned a Nobel Prize in chemistry last October. The most recent iteration of the technology, AlphaFold3, can predict proteins complex structures, as well as modeling how certain proteins might interact with other molecules, like DNA and drugs. These insights can essentially give researchers a supercharged headstart on drug development. DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis explained the tech in a conference call last May: You imagine that AlphaFold gives you the structure of a protein youre interested in, in a particular disease, let’s say, and with these new capabilities we can now design a compound or ligand (a ‘chemical messenger‘) that will bind to a specific place . . . on the surface of the protein, once you understand the structure of it, and we can predict how strong the binding affinity will be, Hassabis said. Its a critical step if you want to design drugs. Currently, AlphaFold serves as an AI-powered first step in drug development. After the AlphaFold3 system models a potential interaction, researchers then need to use other AI models to predict factors like toxicity and interactions with other drugs. Then, to actually commercialize a new drug, it needs to be tested in wet lab experiments, followed by human clinical trials. Whats happening now? Now, that human clinical trial step is finally in sight. According to Murdoch, Isomorphic Labs team is currently collaborating with AI to design drugs for cancer, and is already staffing up for its first human clinical trials. One day we hope to be able to saywell, heres a disease, and then click a button and out pops the design for a drug to address that disease, all powered by these amazing AI tools, Murdoch told Fortune. Isomorphic Labs did not immediately respond to Fast Companys request for comment on what form of cancer its first trial drugs will be designed to target.
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E-Commerce
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