WSJ : Oracle Gives U.S. Government Discount on Cloud and Software

Oracle Gives U.S. Government Discount on Cloud and Software
The deal could help increase adoption of the tech giant’s cloud platform throughout the federal government

  • Oracle is offering the federal government a 75% discount on its license-based software through the end of November.
  • The agreement is the first to provide the entire government with a discount on cloud infrastructure.
  • The deal could increase adoption of Oracle’s cloud platform as it battles other tech giants over federal IT dollars.

Oracle is cutting the cost of its database software and cloud-computing service for the federal government, making it the latest tech giant to offer the Trump administration a significant discount on its services.

The company is offering government agencies a 75% discount on its license-based software, including databases and analytics, as well as a “substantial” discount on its cloud service through the end of November, the General Services Administration said.

Oracle declined to specify how much of a discount it is giving the government on its cloud service. In software, customers can pay up front for a license that covers an extended period or purchase a subscription with recurring payments.

The GSA said the agreement with Oracle—the latest in a series of deals it has signed with large tech companies—is the first of its kind that provides the entire government with a discount on cloud infrastructure. The agency, which oversees procurement for the federal government, said it is in negotiations with other cloud providers to potentially make similar deals.

Cloud infrastructure is the technology used for fundamentals such as data storage, compute and networking, and is considered the backbone of modern IT systems.

In May, the GSA said Salesforce cut the price that it charges the government for use of its messaging-app Slack by 90% through the end of November. An earlier deal with Google was focused on discounting the tech giant’s software, not its cloud infrastructure. Adobe and the search company Elastic have struck similar agreements to offer their software at lower cost.

“Through procurement consolidation, we’re aiming to bring the leverage of the whole, commanding purchasing power of the federal wallet to these [technology providers] to get the best discounts for the taxpayers,” Federal Acquisition Service Commissioner Josh Gruenbaum said in an interview.

The GSA said it intends to achieve those savings by negotiating with tech companies directly, rather than going through third parties. Longer-term discounts with tech providers are expected soon, it added.

The effort is part of the Trump administration’s continued focus on extracting savings from federal contractors—from consulting firms to tech companies. President Trump has issued executive orders aimed at consolidating and streamlining federal procurement.

Though Elon Musk has stepped away from the Department of Government Efficiency, administration officials have said that broader effort to reduce waste continues.

Like prior administrations, Trump’s has said it is focused on modernizing the federal government through technology. Achieving that goal hasn’t been easy—the government still runs on many legacy information-technology systems like mainframe computers.

The deal with Oracle includes providing the federal government with access to its AI services, and special assistance moving IT systems onto the cloud.

“The Trump administration is focused on ensuring that we are delivering the most cutting-edge technology to optimize and pull forward federal government systems into the modern era,” Gruenbaum said. “Breaking down silos and enhancing interoperability to provide maximum transparency is where a lot of waste, fraud and cost takeout is going to come from.”

Oracle is part of a wave of Silicon Valley companies working to get closer to the Trump administration in defense and other areas.

Best known for its database software, Oracle has recently increased the scope of its work with the government. That includes the launch of a new program last month that aims to help smaller vendors sell tech to the Defense Department.

In 2022, Oracle was part of a group of cloud providers including Amazon, Google and Microsoft, that were awarded a major cloud services contract that offers “commercial pricing, or better” to the Defense Department. The GSA said the Pentagon will have the option to purchase discounted cloud services through its latest agreement with Oracle as well.

In January, Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison joined Trump in a White House ceremony announcing Stargate. That initiative includes a set of data centers that Oracle and global tech investor SoftBank Group are building for AI developer OpenAI.

Five years ago, Oracle won the bidding for the U.S. operations of the popular video-sharing app TikTok. Trump last month gave the app another reprieve from a national security ban, and has previously said he was open to an arrangement that transferred TikTok operations to Oracle.

The company’s deal with the GSA could help increase adoption of its cloud platform throughout the government, making the agreement a strategic move as it battles other tech giants over federal IT dollars.

Oracle is still fighting for market share against its rivals, including Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, which dominate the cloud market. But there are signs that the company is gaining some ground. In June, it forecast its total cloud growth rate, which accounts for both applications and infrastructure, will rise 40% this fiscal year, compared with 24% in the prior one.

“We remain steadfast in our commitment to the U.S. government and are thrilled to work with the GSA to help every department and agency modernize their technology and gain the benefits of Oracle Cloud and AI,” Oracle CEO Safra Catz said.

FT : Boston’s biotech sector reels due to Trump health policy uncertainty

Boston’s biotech sector reels due to Trump health policy uncertainty
Issues ranging from medicine approval delays to attacks on Harvard research grants knock driver of regional economy

The live music, free drinks and dancing at a big Boston biotech conference in June belied a stark reality: the city’s biotech sector is in trouble.

While some industries are still languishing since the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates in 2022, few have been hit as hard as the biotech sector by Trump administration policies.

Concerns about routine medicine approvals from the US Food and Drug Administration have frightened investors. The White House’s calls for lower drug prices have chilled deal activity so far this year. President Donald Trump’s attacks on Harvard University have included freezing federal research grants, posing a long-term threat to biotech.

Altogether, the Trump “policy uncertainty has resulted in significant turmoil and operational changes at biopharma companies”, Morgan Stanley said in a June report.

Meanwhile, the lack of investor appetite for new issues has closed the door for many biotechs waiting to go public. Typically, the biotech sector produces at least a dozen initial public offerings a year. But recently, “public [biotech] companies have gotten crushed”, said Dan Gold, president of Fairway Consulting Group, which does biotech recruiting. “There is no exit for venture people when they put in their money now.”

“We are actually seeing companies close, which is new,” Gold said. “I have not seen closures at this volume ever.” 

For the first six months of the year, the number of biotech IPOs sank to its lowest level since 2012, according to Renaissance Capital. Venture capital firms brought no biotech companies to an IPO for the first time since 2011, Renaissance said.

“It is a very tough environment,” said Matthew Kennedy at Renaissance. “At this point, many of the biotechs themselves might be reluctant to move forward knowing they might have a hard time selling the deal.”

Vaccine-maker Moderna, which is headquartered on the north side of Boston’s Charles River, has seen its share price sink 27 per cent this year. The company, a top-20 employer in Boston’s Cambridge neighbourhood, is one of the worst performers in the S&P 500 this year. 

A fifteen minute drive to the north, bluebird bio, which was a $10bn biotech company in 2018, was sold earlier this year for less than $50mn. Vor Biopharma, which is based three subway stops from Harvard University, said in May it would lay off most of its staff.

“What we are seeing in public and private markets is a number of companies that are actually folding,” Marian Nakada, a vice-president at Johnson & Johnson’s venture division, said at the conference. In June, Vor announced a $175mn fundraising as part of a licence agreement with a Chinese biotech company, but a Vor spokeswoman said the lay-offs were still proceeding.

Boston’s small biotech companies have powered the regional economy. Healthcare is Boston’s largest employment sector. Healthcare and social assistance jobs comprise 22 per cent of the city’s workforce, well above the 14 per cent national average, according to government statistics.

Boston has enjoyed a symbiotic relationship between the federal government and local universities — one that has been crippled by government funding cuts. The National Institutes of Health has halted grants to Harvard and other universities, hitting a fertile ground for biotech development.

Deals in biotech that are getting done are under pressure from Washington. Verve Therapeutics, which is based a short walk from Boston’s famous Fenway Park baseball field, was acquired by Eli Lilly in June for $1.3bn. But the deal was prompted in part by the uncertainty following the resignation of a top FDA official, Verve said in a June 25 regulatory filing. The company said its share price plunged after Peter Marks quit, raising concerns that FDA approvals could be delayed.

“The declining regulatory landscape for biopharmaceutical companies” had made raising cash “even more difficult”, Verve said.

Earlier in June, KalVista Pharmaceuticals, which is headquartered on the Charles River, said the FDA missed a regulatory deadline for one of its drug approvals. The delay was “due to heavy workload and limited resources” at the agency, KalVista said. A company spokeswoman declined to comment beyond its regulatory filings.

Boston’s June biotech conference was hosted by the Biotechnology Innovation Organization, the sector’s biggest lobbying group. To counter Trump’s policies, the organisation has increased its lobbying this year by hiring former Republican senator Richard Burr, who sponsored the FDA Modernization Act of 1997.

At the conference, FDA commissioner Marty Makary said the agency’s “morale is good and improving”.

But Gold at Fairway Consulting Group said he was having conversations almost every week with FDA employees looking for new jobs. “I think the morale is awful there from what I am hearing.”

Morale is also suffering at Harvard, Cambridge’s biggest employer. Promising biotech science that starts at such universities can be spun out into independent companies. Boston’s Beam Therapeutics, for example, was co-founded by Harvard professor David Liu. Beam has a licence agreement with Harvard and has paid the university $15mn since the company’s IPO.

“I definitely have long-term concerns about the trajectory of funding in the US and the stability of our science ecosystem,” Beam’s chief executive John Evans said in an interview.

FT : Mining boss calls for price support to challenge China’s critical minerals

Mining boss calls for price support to challenge China’s critical minerals dominance
Sibanye-Stillwater chief executive says suppliers to western nations need ‘level playing field’

Western governments should provide price guarantees for critical minerals miners if they are to compete with Chinese rivals who receive huge state support, the boss of leading platinum producer Sibanye-Stillwater has said.

The comments by Neal Froneman come as industrialised nations have become alarmed by China’s dominance in the production and processing of critical minerals — but have stopped short of setting prices for raw materials or creating a joint buying programme.

“They have to level the playing field for us as mining companies,” Froneman, chief executive of the Johannesburg-listed platinum and battery metals producer, told the Financial Times. “If we mine for the US or even Europe, we should be guaranteed certain prices so that we get the right returns.”

Over the past year, China has halted exports of certain materials such as rare earths, gallium, germanium and graphite, creating a squeeze on manufacturing supply chains for the defence, automotive and semiconductor industries in western countries.

The idea of a joint buying mechanism, in which the US and allies such as Australia would commit to purchasing materials at certain minimum prices, has been gaining traction since the G7 summit last month, according to people familiar with the governments’ thinking.

G7 participants pledged at the summit to develop “standards-based markets” for critical minerals, which is seen as a potential first step towards a joint buying pool.

Sibanye has expanded into battery metals in recent years as it seeks to benefit from rising demand due to electric vehicles and the energy transition. It has a lithium project in Finland and a nickel refinery in France.

Froneman, who is set to retire in September, said that Chinese mining rivals had access to a lower cost of finance and followed different environmental standards that cut their costs. But he defended Sibanye’s decision to cater primarily to customers in the west.

“We recognised that the world was going to de-globalise, and polarise around the east and the west. And we specifically chose not to be a contract miner for the Chinese, like so many miners are,” said Froneman, who has led Sibanye since it was formed in 2013.

Sibanye has received some government support for specific projects, but Froneman called on the US and Europe to do more.

“We incur higher costs, and we have higher costs of capital. There needs to be some form of support to make us competitive, because the model is that it’s a western-world, capitalist system. Shareholders require returns,” he said.

The company, which has an enterprise valuation of $7bn, reported net losses in the 2023 and 2024 financial years, due to low prices for platinum and palladium, and a writedown on its US operations.

Richard Stewart, Sibanye’s chief regional officer in South Africa, is due to succeed Froneman from October.

Sibanye’s Finnish lithium project received a €500mn loan last year backed by Finland’s Export Credit Agency, the European Investment Bank and other funders. Its GalliCam project in France, which is repurposing a nickel refinery to produce precursor battery metals, has been selected for a €144mn grant from the EU Innovation Fund.

Its projects in the US have received tax credits that will be worth as much as $60mn this year, according to company reports.

The Information : AI’s Unexpected Consequence: Meta, Google and Big Tech Finally

AI’s Unexpected Consequence: Meta, Google and Big Tech Finally Appreciate Art
Silicon Valley once wasn’t as interested in art as Wall Street and other firms. Now, they’re buying AI art and establishing themselves as the new corporate Medicis.

On an unseasonably warm May afternoon in Manhattan’s bustling Rockefeller Center, the designers Wade Jeffree and Leta Sobierajski stood a few yards in front of a large, colorful sculpture—a “vibrant mirrored maze,” as a nearby placard puts it—that they’d spent the past year building. Billed as a Google Labs Collaboration, the project, per the tech giant, was spurred by the question, “How can generative AI expand the creative process?” Google equipped the Brooklyn-based couple with its latest tool, Whisk, a “generative media experiment… designed for rapid visual ideation,” which the pair then used to help create the structure.
For the tourists traipsing by to behold the enormous work, snap a selfie or spin the fluorescent disc incorporated in the design, AI’s influence in its creation may not have been immediately evident. The two designers, both clad in sunglasses and exuding cool in the sweltering heat, described Whisk as a “third partner” that aided their creative process. “We used Whisk as more of a mood board or helping us with ideation,” Sobierajski explained. “Essentially, our process, along with sketches, was speaking with Whisk, typing in prompts, getting feedback, getting imagery, and using that as a jumping-off point to design something. This design did not immediately come out of the system.”
As much as the project was devised to represent the frontier of AI and art and how they intersect, humans were still the driving force in its ultimate realization, Jeffree made sure to stress. “We had to get to a point where we had to make it for people, and that’s where we had to take over and curate the base idea and then bring it to life: How does it spin? How would a kid use it? How would an adult use it?”
Tech companies are increasingly playing an instrumental role in promoting AI art, as evidenced in partnerships like the one that resulted in the Rockefeller Center sculpture. At the same time, Steve Sacks, who owns bitforms gallery in Manhattan’s Lower East Side, said he has recently been working with some high-profile tech companies on specific purchases and commissions, indicating that there are several players looking to purchase and invest in AI art. (He wouldn’t comment on the specific companies.)
The Takeaway
While Silicon Valley has generally shown little interest in art, big tech firms are newly interested in collecting AI art and providing new AI tools to artists.
This marks a notable shift in tech companies’ engagement with the arts, as tech firms historically haven’t been major art world players in the way that banks and other major corporations have. Sacks, for instance, once owned a gallery in San Francisco which he had to close after two years because it “wasn’t doing enough business,” in part due to lack of activity from the major tech companies in Silicon Valley.
“A big chunk of my collector base has been corporate collections over the past 20-something years, but these collectors or corporations are very, very traditional, old school, UBS, Bank of America, Chase, Fidelity. They have legit collections with art handlers, curators, registrars, big budgets, and they fill all of their millions of square feet with incredible art,”Sacks said. “But there are very few companies from the kind of post-internet generation that have this mentality of collecting for corporate culture.”
The relationship between the companies and the artists interested in AI is often more than one of collector and creator. In many cases, the businesses resemble latter-day corporate Medicis, serving as the artists’ patrons—handing them AI tools to develop their work and then using their feedback to perfect the software, which might then have broad commercial appeal. By buying and promoting AI art, Silicon Valley is broadly promoting AI itself, the industry’s foremost concern at the moment. It’s a quiet, intriguing corner of this moment of AI mania.

Art by Mario Klingemann, Sofia Crespo and Refik Anadol. (Courtesy: artists)
AI Artists to Know
Here are some of the most prominent artists experimenting with the frontier technology.
  • Refik Anadol: Exhibited at MoMA in 2023; led Sotheby’s auction in February. (Location: Los Angeles)
  • Sofia Crespo: Exhibited at the Victoria & Albert Museum. (Lisbon, Portugal)
  • Stephanie Dinkins: Senior fellow at Eric Schmidt’s AI2050. (New York City)
  • Mario Klingemann: Exhibited at MoMA and the Met; former artist-in-residence at Google. (Munich, Germany)
  • Alexander Reben: OpenAI’s first artist in residence. (San Francisco)

Mira Lane, Google’s senior director of technology and society, said the company looks for a back-and-forth exchange with artists, and this has been a focal point in the company’s thinking about how to invest in AI art: “You don’t want it to be a one-way relationship. There should be a feedback loop between them.” Lane said the company is reliant on the artists’ input in its development of tools. “Artists play a really big role in that,” she said. “It’s not, ‘Just help us develop our creative technologies.’ It’s, ‘Help us push the frontier in ways we hadn’t thought about.’”
All creative fields and industries, of course, are currently grappling with AI-prompted change. Visual artists have had access to AI tools for a long time, but never to the extent of the past year, as AI has greatly proliferated.

In February, Christie’s held what the preeminent auction house billed as the “first-ever artificial intelligence-dedicated sale” (including works from artists such as Refik Anadol, Charles Csuri, and Claire Silver). Artsy, an industry bible and news site, deemed it a “huge success,” with Christie’s selling 28 of 34 lots for a total of $728,784. The sale received particular attention for the younger collectors who were brought into the fold: 48% of those who purchased work were either Millennials or Gen Z—very much not the usual crowd for Christie’s—and 37% of those who bought works were new to Christie’s entirely.
Sarah Meyohas, a visual artist who has worked in film, photography, virtual reality and sculpture—and received much acclaim for projects including her “BitchCoin” release in 2015—said she has been encouraged by the way Google has engaged with artists. She pointed to a recently announced collaboration between Google and the director Darren Aronofsky. (Google is offering AI tools for Aronofsky’s production company to utilize with a group of his company’s emerging filmmakers.)
Meyohas recently has spent time exploring Google DeepMind’s latest Veo model, which generates videos from image and text prompts. “I’m super impressed with the results,” Meyohas said of the Veo model. “I can see how this is a creative medium now, more than in the past. And I can see that Google wants that to happen. I was talking to Darren, and I’ve been meeting with people at Google, and it seems like they’re really excited about the model: I can now see that authorship is possible with the video models.”
Sacks, whose bitforms gallery has worked with a slew of artists incorporating AI tools in the development of their art, said that two of the artists featured in his gallery recently completed “residencies” at Meta. The artists partnered with the company’s R&D and New Technologies departments “to evolve their art practice, which was kind of interesting,” Sacks said.
Lane explained that Google feels strongly that, in addition to supporting artists individually, putting their muscle behind these AI art initiatives helps to set a broader example. “I think it’s important for Google, and a lot of the big companies, to be supporting the humanities,” she said. “And if there’s going to be disruption in this space, part of responsible innovation involves, ‘Hey, what does it look like to bring that industry along?’”
The way in which corporations—tech and otherwise—invest in art, both internally and externally, has evolved in recent years. “I think a lot of industries struggle with how to engage with the arts and they don’t know how,” Lane said. “And so I think Google showing, ‘Here’s how we do it,’ gives people a little bit of a playbook on how they might do it so it doesn’t feel extractive.”

For those who still have PTSD from the NFT craze of a few years ago (now viewed as a since-popped “bubble”), it’s important to note the differences in this current AI moment. As Artsy noted, “the frequent conflation of AI-generated art with NFTs can confuse collectors,” and this has been an obstacle, more generally, in perceptions of AI art. Put overly simply, “AI-generated art” is made by artists using AI tools (like ChatGPT or DeepAI), whereas NFTs are digital objects defined by their ownership, as they’re acquired by their purchasers via blockchain technology.
There does remain controversy, however, about the way in which AI art has been accepted in the larger community. When the Christie’s AI art sale was announced in February, a petition asking for the auction house to cancel the sale garnered 6,500 signatures. This letter set forth, “these models, and the companies behind them, exploit human artists, using their work without permission or payment to build commercial AI products that compete with them.” (Christie’s responded at the time: “The artists represented in this sale have strong, existing multidisciplinary art practices, some recognized in leading museum collections. The works in this auction are using artificial intelligence to enhance their bodies of work.”)
Sacks explained that this is, in his mind, a new undulation in the evolving terrain. “We’ve been doing new media experimental art and technology at the gallery for 25 years. So this is just another tool that’s being utilized,” he said. “For us, I don’t like using the terms ‘AI art’ and ‘digital art’ because they’re really just tools that are being utilized. And, of course, they’re being exposed and exploited in different ways via auction houses.” He added later, of the “AI art” moniker, “It’s like saying you’re an acrylic artist. It’s too specific.”
Nonny de la Peña—founder and CEO of the digital media company Emblematic Group—said she doesn’t even like to engage in arguments related to the question of whether “AI art” qualifies as art. “Frankly, as far as I’m concerned, the debate itself is a non-starter,” she said. “Most of my work is thinking in three and four dimensions, and in no way could I do the work I’m doing now without the AI components that drive the technology. It’s an unbelievable amount of hard work.”

At Rockefeller Center, standing in front of their shimmering achievement amongst the throngs of tourists, Jeffree and Sobierajski reflected on the future of AI and art.
Sobierajski assessed the state of play: “We’re constantly trying to expand the way that we think, and we want to adapt. We want to utilize new options. I think it’s something that we can use as a supplementary tool. I don’t think it’s a tool that we say, ‘Here, go do it. It’s done.’”
While Google Labs’ Whisk served as the “third partner” for the pair in the creation of their sculpture, they noted, Whisk couldn’t have done it all on its own. “I think what makes this feel so monumental and exciting for us and other people is that there is still the human thought involved,” Sobierajski said. “I think that until something like AI can actually program empathy, we still really need to be a part of that process.”

WSJ : Has There Ever Been a Better Time to Buy an EV?

Has There Ever Been a Better Time to Buy an EV?
With federal tax credits for electric vehicles about to end, carmakers try rock-bottom pricing to spur sales

Despite incentives, U.S. electric vehicle sales fell 6.2% in June, marking the third consecutive month of decline.
Range, cost and charging infrastructure concerns contribute to American drivers’ hesitation toward electric vehicles.
Republican lawmakers are phasing out the $7,500 EV tax credit.

Not even bargain-basement deals are enough to entice U.S. drivers to go all-in on electric vehicles.

A Hyundai dealership in New Jersey is hyping a $169-a-month lease on its Ioniq 6 sedan, which carries a sticker price of about $38,000, making it far less expensive than a comparably priced lease on its gasoline-burning models.

Kia will lease its small Niro EV SUV for as little as $129 a month.

And a GMC dealership in Indiana touts the Hummer EV—with a $100,000 sticker price—for a monthly lease payment of $650, similar to the monthly payment for a gas-powered car that costs half as much to buy.

The dealership in Kokomo, Ind., sells about one Hummer EV a month, sales manager Travis Shedron said. Curious shoppers will check it out, then opt for a gas-powered Cadillac Escalade or GMC Denali instead.

“They’re doing well, but they’re not selling as well” as gas-powered alternatives, he said of the Hummers.

Even as automakers pile on the financial incentives to entice buyers, EV sales are falling. In June they were lower by 6.2%, the third straight monthly decline for battery-powered cars, according to estimates from Motor Intelligence, an industry-research firm. Tesla, which accounts for roughly half the EV market in the U.S., said last week that its global sales dropped 13.5% during the second quarter.

The plunge comes despite EV makers spending record amounts on customer discounts and incentives. Meanwhile, Republican lawmakers are phasing out the $7,500 EV tax credit that has been in place for years to help boost sales.

Why are so many American drivers hesitant? “It’s [driving] range, it’s cost and it’s charging infrastructure,” said Mark Barrott, automotive lead at consulting firm Plante Moran. “They’ve always been the big three reasons.”

Despite EV skepticism, EV models have proliferated. There are 75 models on sale in the U.S. this year, up from fewer than 20 on offer in 2020. There are twice as many incentives offered to buy EVs as exist for gas-powered cars, said Stephanie Valdez Streaty, an analyst for Cox Automotive. Promotions covered more than 14% of the average transaction price in May, according to Cox’s data.

Tesla’s price drops have driven the market, she added. During the most recent quarter, Tesla offered 0% financing for its Model 3 sedan, which starts at roughly $42,000, and the Cybertruck, which starts at $69,990.

Last week, the Tesla showroom in Manhattan’s Meatpacking District was busier than traditional car dealerships lining 11th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, but tourists accounted for most of the foot traffic. Out-of-towners seemed more interested in snapping photos of Tesla’s Optimus humanoid robot than taking a test drive.

Vincent Darbouze of Quebec stopped to compare the latest Tesla models with the Swedish Polestar EV he owns. He said he has no plans to trade in his vehicle now, but could be convinced by the right financial incentives.

“I know the tax credits in the U.S. are kind of done,” he said.

The EV tax credits targeted by Republicans have been a key driver of electric-car sales, particularly among less-affluent buyers. For new cars, the credit amounts to as much as $7,500 off the price, while used-car costs can be cut by up to $4,000. President Trump’s “big, beautiful bill” puts an end to those credits as of Sept. 30.

Some drivers may be motivated to buy or lease an EV before fall, but analysts aren’t expecting a groundswell of interest. That is because making the leap to an EV can be daunting because of the cost of home chargers and the lack of a robust charging infrastructure in many U.S. cities and along major highways. Many carmakers including Ford, BMW and Hyundai are trying to allay these worries with deals for free home-charger installation or offers to cover the cost of charging at a public station.

Leasing has remained the primary way for dealers to move EVs off their lots. Wealthy customers and pricier EVs haven’t been eligible for the EV credit that is expiring, but those restrictions haven’t applied to leased vehicles. In the fall, both sales and leases will have to succeed or fail in an unsubsidized EV market.

“That gives us basically 60 days to figure out what our plan is,” said David Christ, general manager of Toyota in North America. “The ground under the transactional experience for the EV is about to change and we’ll have to reset.”

WSJ : Investors Come Around to Trump’s Uncertainty

Investors Come Around to Trump’s Uncertainty
Are the effects of geopolitical and tariff uncertainty on the economy still to come, or were they overestimated?

Uncertainty is usually the enemy of investment. This year not so much. Twin uncertainties about tariffs and whether President Trump will honor U.S. security guarantees have prompted governments and companies to pour money into defending themselves, helping stocks.

For now.

The biggest change is geopolitics. Doubt over Trump’s commitment to protecting Europe led the European Commission to permit extra borrowing for defense, with Germany adding 500 billion euros, equivalent to $588 billion, for infrastructure on top of boosting military spending by more than 1% of gross domestic product. Far from hurting stocks, investors were delighted that Europe in general and Germany in particular are pouring government money into the economy, and share prices soared in anticipation of fat profits ahead.

“We might look back and say the geopolitical uncertainty was what Europe really needed to get their act together,” said Vincenzo Vedda, chief investment officer at Germany’s DWS.

Markets are anticipating big improvements in Europe, led by defense stocks. The Stoxx aerospace and defense index has just had its best six months ever, leaping 54% in the first half of the year—and 74% in dollar terms.

In the U.S., meanwhile, the impact of tariffs was blunted or delayed, or both, as companies stocked up on imports before the extra taxes were imposed. As a result, inflation has been under control and close to target, coming in below forecasts in both April and May. After an initial nasty selloff when the biggest tariffs were announced, stocks have fully recovered, helped by Trump’s delay to most tariffs and a few trade deals.

The question for investors is whether the effects of geopolitical and tariff uncertainty on the economy are still to come, or were overestimated. Here are three possibilities:

Uncertainty came back down. Markets think they have the measure of Trump. Stocks have rallied in part because the big selloff forced Trump to delay most tariffs, and he retreated from punitive tariff levels on China after it withheld vital minerals.

Next week we get Trump’s self-imposed deadline for countries to do a deal or face the much higher so-called reciprocal tariff rate. So far only the U.K. and Vietnam have agreed to provisional deals, and both could still face new import charges on sectors including pharmaceuticals, copper, timber, aircraft and trucks where pre-tariff investigations are under way. Few believe he will simply reimpose crippling tariffs when, as seems likely, deals aren’t cut with every country in time.

Markets might, of course, be wrong. According to the daily trade-policy uncertainty index compiled by academics Scott Baker of Northwestern and Nick Bloom and Steven Davis of Stanford by analyzing newspaper articles, uncertainty remains extraordinarily high. Sure, it spiked higher in March and April, but on Wednesday it remained higher than at any time before Trump took office. It was its 16th-highest day since its 1985 start, with all previous 15 higher days being in the past four months.

Uncertainty did hurt, but showed up only in the dollar. Investors and governments outside the U.S. have been notably less keen on American assets both when stocks fell and when they rebounded, and the greenback had its worst first half since the Nixon devaluation of 1973 (though it has had worse six-month periods at other times of the year).

In dollar terms, foreign stocks beat U.S. stocks by the most in the first six months of a year since 1993. Still, if an effect of the geopolitical uncertainty is better policymaking and more growth in Europe, the higher global demand should help American companies too.


Uncertainty will hurt, in time. Faced with policy uncertainty, CEOs typically hold off making critical decisions, which should depress corporate investment.

“You cannot commit to long-term investment when the rules of the game are not clear,” said Claudio Irigoyen, head of global economics research at Bank of America. “[But] it’s going to take time to see it. We’re not seeing the effects of uncertainty on capex yet. We’re not seeing the effects of tariffs on inflation yet.”

Purchasing managers surveyed by the Institute for Supply Management, who are on the front line of tariff uncertainty, appear to agree. In the latest survey one called the situation “hellacious.” This comment attributed to a tech-sector executive was typical: “The erratic trade policy with on-again/off-again tariffs has led to price uncertainty for customers, who appear to be prepared to hold off large capital purchases until stability returns…Operations has planned additional weeks of downtime at multiple plants to accommodate reduced orders.”

The argument that tariffs mean higher prices and slower growth is virtually the same as it was in April, before the market went into rapid-recovery mode. It is easy to see why investors have tired of waiting for the bad news to appear in prices or profits.

Even if uncertainty does delay corporate decisions, the economic impact may be obscured by the boom in spending on data centers for artificial intelligence. That could take up the slack from delays or cuts to other long-term investment projects. Equally, delays to new projects as chief executives wait for policy clarity take time to show up, and while it might feel like an eternity to anyone whose job involves tariff rates, it is only five months since Trump took office.

The scale of uncertainty helps explain the stark divide between bulls and bears. Bulls look at how the economy’s been doing, and say all is good: Corporate investment is high (thank you, AI), spending is still decent, profits are great and growth looks OK.

Bears look at the effects of uncertainty in the confidence surveys and other “soft” data and fear that weak consumer and corporate sentiment will eventually show up in lower spending, profits and growth.

I suspect the tariff effects will come through into at least some inflationary pressure and weaker growth, and I’m less confident than investors are that Trump will fold whenever he faces tariff pushback. Most of all, with U.S. markets back at highs and again so highly valued, it feels like a decent time to take some money off the table. Uncertainty won’t be a good thing forever.

>>> Week End Press Digess

- Dealmakers hit pause on M&A as caution rules the boardroom - FT
- Berlin explores €4bn subsidies for German heavy industry to boost growth - FT
- Why It’s Time to Buy This Rocks and Cement Spinoff Stock You’ve Probably Never Heard Of - Barrons
- British-made Typhoon production grinds to a halt raising fears about UK defence skills - FT
- Union claims grid companies are incentivised not to maintain plants - FT
- Octopus Energy Eyes Demerger of Tech Arm Kraken, Sky Says & FT
- Musk launches US political party to fight ‘one-party system’ - FT
- Wood Group accounts flagged by watchdog as far back as 2017 - FT

FT : Musk launches US political party to fight ‘one-party system’

Musk launches US political party to fight ‘one-party system’
Billionaire investor offers no significant details but suggests key congressional races will be initial targets

Elon Musk, the billionaire investor who has clashed with Donald Trump after being one of the president’s closest allies in US business, said he had formed a new political party to fight the “one-party system” afflicting America.

Musk made the announcement on X, his social media platform, on Saturday, following the enactment on July 4 of Trump’s landmark domestic policy bill, which the head of Tesla and SpaceX has blasted for adding to America’s debt.

“When it comes to bankrupting our country with waste & graft, we live in a one-party system, not a democracy. Today, the America Party is formed to give you back your freedom,” Musk wrote.

Musk did not offer any significant details about the launch of his political venture, but suggested that it would initially at least target key congressional races. He did not indicate that he would be a candidate for political office.

“One way to execute on this would be to laser-focus on just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” Musk wrote on X on Friday. “Given the razor-thin legislative margins, that would be enough to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people.”

Musk’s move to create a new US party comes after he burst on to the American political scene last summer as a top donor and adviser to Trump, helping fund the president’s winning 2024 campaign and organising get-out-the-vote operations in some battleground districts.

Musk then joined the Trump administration as a senior adviser to the president and the leading official in the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, which sought to find ways to save money in federal agencies.

But Musk fell out with Trump over the president’s “big, beautiful bill”, which extends sweeping tax cuts while only partially paying for them through new spending reductions, adding more than $3tn to the US debt over the next 10 years, according to a variety of independent projections.

“Anyone who campaigned on the PROMISE of REDUCING SPENDING, but continues to vote on the BIGGEST DEBT ceiling increase in HISTORY will see their face on this poster in the primary next year,” Musk wrote last week on X, showing an image of Pinocchio with the word “LIAR” written above his face.

Musk on Friday polled his audience on X to ask whether respondents wanted him to set up a new party, finding that 65.4 per cent wanted the “America Party” while 34.6 per cent were opposed to it.

But even though Musk would be able to deploy is own vast financial war chest to fund a new political party, such a venture would face huge obstacles in breaking through the grip on power in America held by Republicans and Democrats.

Efforts to create third parties in the US — most recently the “No Labels” movement that sought to offer an alternative to Trump and Joe Biden in the 2024 presidential election — have routinely failed.