Monday 09/06/25

Federal agents clash with anti-deportation protesters in LA (Financial Times, Christopher Grimes and Joe Miller) reports on how police and came up against protesters in LA for a third day as Trump called in the National Guard to quell demonstrations against raids on suspected illegal immigrants. Trump invoked a rarely used law on the weekend, overriding objections by local law enforcement, justifying it by saying that “…Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by Illegal Aliens and Criminals”. Trump then said in a Truth Social post that he had ordered officials “to take all such action necessary to liberate Los Angeles from the Migrant Invasion, and put an end to these Migrant riots”. Donald Trump’s immigration restrictions threaten restaurant labour shortage (Financial Times, Stephanie Stacey) suggests that the attack on immigrants will put even more pressure on the restaurant industry in an already stretched jobs market. Some are now afraid to come to work and resulting shortages will put even more upward pressure on wages. According to the National Restaurant Association, over 20% of restaurant workers in the US were born outside it. Most are legit but there area a high number of illegals – but Trump’s actions have freaked out both legal and illegal immigrants. * SO WHAT? * Trump’s crackdown is really spreading a lot of fear – among immigrants and business owners alike. Ultimately, you would have thought that more restaurants will go out of business as the inevitable higher prices will prove to be too much for businesses and customers alike. This will probably mean falling consumption and less choice. 

Meanwhile, ABC suspends journalist for calling Trump and adviser ‘world-class haters’ (Financial Times, Anna Nicolaou) shows that a senior journalist at Disney-owned ABC News was suspended “pending further evaluation” for making the remarks on X after midnight on Saturday. The remarks were described by Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt as “unacceptable and unhinged rhetoric”, adding that “ABC is going to have to answer for what their so-called journalist put out on Twitter in the wee hours of the night”. * SO WHAT? * This all just goes to show what happens when you criticise Trump. ABC is already being sued after anchor George Stephanopoulos falsely said on-air that the president had been found “liable for rape”, so will obviously be super-sensitive about any controversial remarks. Trump is engaged in a number of aggressive actions against the media via lawsuits and has also threatened regulatory actions. It really does seem that the White House is gradually bending the media to silence any dissent in order to take complete control of the narrative.

In trade news, Executives converge on Washington to halt Trump’s foreign investment tax (Financial Times, Martin Arnold and Alex Rogers) highlights concerns that are about to be expressed to Trump himself by chiefs of some of America’s biggest companies that plans to hike taxes on foreign investments in the US will hit jobs. The bill that is making its way through Congress currently will allow the US to slap additional taxes on companies and investors from countries whose tax regimes it doesn’t like. Execs reckon that enactment of Section 899 of the bill will ultimately lead to a fall in corporate investment and see a further retreat from investing in US assets. Meanwhile, US companies push for lower Vietnamese tariffs as China hedge (Financial Times, A. Anantha Lakshmi) shows that American companies want the government to lower tariffs on Vietnam because it has, over the years, become a key part of the whole “China plus on” diversification strategy. * SO WHAT? * Vietnam was a big winner from Trump’s anti-China stance in his first term with manufacturing from the likes of Apple, Intel and Nike among the companies to make the move there. This is what led to Vietnam’s massive trade surplus with the US, which Trump attacked with a huge 46% tariff in April. This is a major issue that needs solving asap because Vietnam is a vital part of many American companies’ supply chains. For instance, it now accounts for about 50% of Nike’s footwear production! The 90-day pause on tariffs will end on July 9th so the clock is ticking…

Then in Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s allies urge reconciliation after damaging split (Financial Times, Joe Miller, Alex Rogers, George Hammond and Hannah Murphy) shows that allies on both sides are pushing for the two pouting grown-ups to mend fences in order to limit

the political and commercial damage. It turned out on Friday that Trump said he’d sell or give away the Tesla he bought previously as a show of support for the former “first buddy” 🤣. At the moment, it’s not looking good…

In Trump tariffs could wipe out European steel sector, senior industry figure says (The Guardian, Lisa O’Carroll) we see that German steel, engineering and chemicals giant ThyssenKrupp expressed extreme concern at the European Policy Centre conference in Brussels. Board member Ilse Henne highlighted the danger to industry of Trump’s decision last week to double tariffs on steel and aluminium imports from 25% to 50%. * SO WHAT? * Steel is central to many everyday (and not so everyday) items and if the European steel industry weakens significantly this will have a huge knock-on effect elsewhere – the defence industry immediately springs to mind! As if this wasn’t bad enough already, everyone is going to be worried about the European market being flooded with cheap Chinese steel. This has already been happening as Chinese steel imports boomed by 36% in Q1 of 2025, according to Eurostat. The UK’s steel industry, on the other hand, has managed to swerve the 50% tariff thus far. It will continue to pay 25% until 9th July, but it could go to zero as part of a wider trade deal with the US.

Elsewhere, China prices weaken further as economic pressures mount (Financial Times, Thomas Hale) cites the latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics which shows that China’s consumer price index fell by 0.1% in May. Prices fell for the fourth month in a row and producer prices dropped at their steepest rate in almost two years as domestic demand continues to be weak despite a string of measures announced here and there to spark the economy out of its coma. The problem is that the US-China trade war is overshadowing everything.

In Europe, Italy votes on speeding up citizenship for foreigners (Financial Times, Amy Kazmin) highlights a vote that started yesterday in Italy on shortening the residency requirement for citizenship from the current 10 years to five years. In contrast, EU citizens can get it after just four years. PM Meloni is very much against this but it was sparked into life by a petition and has the backing of opposition parties, labour unions and social activists. The problem is that, to pass, over 50% of eligible voters, plus one must back the motion to be binding. At the moment it looks highly likely that the number of voters will fall short of this target. Still, it’s interesting to see that it made it this far at all. Polls will close this afternoon…

Going back to America again, Westinghouse targets $75bn US nuclear expansion after Trump order (Financial Times, Jamie Smyth) shows that the Pennsylvania-based nuclear developer is in talks with US officials and industry partners about potentially building 10 new big reactors in order to feed into Trump’s aims to prompt an American atomic energy boom (the president’s aim is for nuclear energy capacity to quadruple in the US by 2050). Trump’s Golden Dome pits Silicon Valley against defence giants (Financial Times, Steff Chavez and Tabby Kinder) highlights the pitting of Tech against defence as they bid to build Trump’s much-touted Golden Dome defence shield inspired by Israel’s Iron Dome. The administration has made an explicit appeal for “non-traditional” contractors to get involved, but I have to say that on tech this serious surely existing defence companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman will win out in the end…then in Harvard in talks with universities to host students hit by Donald Trump’s visa clampdown (Financial Times, Andrew Jack) we see that the embattled Ivy League university is in talks with top US and international universities to temporarily accommodate its foreign students affected by Trump’s current clampdown. I guess that this is a damage limitation exercise but I’m sorry to sound defeatist – I just don’t think this is going to work. As I’ve said before, these university years are very important and if you had your heart set on Harvard then you’re not really going to be that chuffed with being packed off to the London Business School (sorry LBS, but you know what I mean). You’ll just pick something yourself – and is that still going to be American??

Disrupted or displaced? How AI is shaking up jobs (Financial Times, Anjli Raval) takes a look at how AI has impacted jobs so far. At Ocado, it has helped orders to be picked in less than half the time – and with fewer workers. White-collar jobs are also being affected. The guy who runs Anthropic reckons that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level office jobs over the next five years and VC firm SignalFire says that the number of recruits in big tech companies has already dropped by 25% versus 2023. Duolingo CEO on going AI-first: ‘I did not expect the blowback’ (Financial Times, Emma Jacobs) highlights one example of a company that outlined its intentions to go “AI-first” in a LinkedIn post last month that viral – and the blowback it got. Still, Duolingo has always relied on tech, so perhaps users shouldn’t be all that surprised. * SO WHAT? * Even if jobs today are not yet being swept aside at scale, AI is definitely forcing a rapid evolution. Supporters of the tech say that having more “AI literate” workforce will make everyone more productive and able to deliver higher-value work. For instance, biotech company Moderna recently merged its HR and tech functions, IBM has taken it a step further by using AI agents to replace hundreds of HR staff and Klarna says that AI now managed over two-thirds of customer service calls. I think that the key thing here is to be cognisant of what elements of the job can be better executed with AI and those that can’t – and as an employee you then need to adapt. I think that the CEO of Duolingo, Luis von Ahn, put it best when he said, “AI is creating uncertainty for all of us, and we can respond to this with fear or curiosity”.

In other AI news, Microsoft to rank ‘safety’ of AI models sold to cloud customers (Financial Times, Rafe Uddin and Cristina Criddle) shows that Microsoft is going to give AI models ratings based on their safety performance, something that’s likely to sway users on which models and apps to purchase via Microsoft. At the moment, the company ranks three metrics – quality, cost and throughput – but new safety benchmarks will also be useful to differentiate between each model.

Then Apple’s struggles to update Siri lead to investor concerns over AI strategy (Financial Times, Michael Acton) highlights delays to upgrades for its AI voice assistant for the iPhone, prompting speculation that Apple’s going to disappoint next week at its flagship annual event. It’s thought that the company’s attempts to integrate AI technologies has been very buggy, something that hasn’t affected competitors such as OpenAI, because they’ve built their proprietary models from scratch. Meanwhile, Europe’s Mistral benefits from search for artificial

intelligence alternatives (Financial Times, Ivan Levingston, Tim Bradshaw, Melissa Heikkila and George Hammond) shows that Europe’s most well-known AI start-up, Mistral, has managed to win new contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars thanks to European companies want to establish regional champions. This should definitely help with further fund-raising! Given all the American and Chinese drama, there’s an increased impetus for investors and companies alike to seek alternatives to US Big Tech in particular.

Back home, UK ministers delay AI regulation amid plans for more ‘comprehensive’ bill (The Guardian, Eleni Courea and Kiran Stacey) shows that the government is going to delay regulations governing AI for at least a year as it is moving to introduce a “comprehensive” AI bill in the next parliamentary session to address areas such as safety and copyright. The government had originally planned to put in place a narrower AI bill early doors that would have forced companies to hand over their AI models to the UK’s AI Security Institute for testing. Is this delay evidence of the government’s desire to appease Big Tech and Trump? * SO WHAT? * The creative sector has hit back and you would have thought that there will be a gaping hole in security and use of material in the meantime.

Then in Nvidia partnerships boost UK as tech week begins in London (The Times, Katie Prescott) we see that the chipmaker will unveil a raft of UK partnerships to bolster AI capabilities and talked about working with the government to help businesses make best use of AI. It has committed to help train 100,000 people by 2030. * SO WHAT? * This is a positive development, particularly at a time when it looks like France is edging ahead of the UK in terms of AI as it has been using tax breaks to encourage the AI start-up ecosystem and has a lot of nuclear power to supply power-hungry data centres.

Sam Altman’s eyeball-scanning digital ID project to launch in UK (Financial Times, George Hammond) heralds the arrival in the UK of Altman’s digital ID project, World, that scans people’s eyes, generating a unique digital ID. World asserts that the verification tool it’s developing will help banks detect fraud, mean that dating apps just contain humans and that concert tickets aren’t bought up by bots. * SO WHAT? * This sounds great in theory but a number of countries have expressed concerns over security and privacy. The project was started in 2019 but launched properly in the US in April.

In a quick scoot around some of today’s other interesting stories, Chinese regulators seek to slow rollout of self-driving features in cars (Financial Times, Edward White and Gloria Li) shows that the rapid development in China of driverless technologies is going to slow down for the moment as regulators have become increasingly alarmed. They will be doing a deeper dive on safety and liability. At the moment, about 20% of new cars sold in China have high-level autonomous functions – but a fully-formed solid legal framework to back all this up is not yet in place. * SO WHAT? * There is a lot of support for driverless tech at the top level, but the government hasn’t given a clear roadmap on any legal framework, preferring thus far to leave it with local governments to deal with. Chinese insurance and transport regulators usually look at best practices overseas to guide them – but China is at the cutting edge of this tech so will have to be pioneer in regulation as well! It’s going to be complicated but it will be necessary as the tech continues to proliferate…

In financials news, Private equity firms overhaul exit strategies as IPO market slams shut (Financial Times, Alexandra Heal and Ivan Levingston) further highlights challenges that some PE firms are facing as the relative drought of IPOs continues for longer than expected (although it seems to me like it’s been picking up recently). Some PE firms are looking to break their investments up and sell off those parts. * SO WHAT? * When you consider that the volume of PE-backed IPOs has dropped from 116 in H1 2021 at their height to just 9 across Europe and the US in the same period so far this year, you can understand the concern! The backlog of assets gathering dust continues to build. That being said, things can change quickly and recent IPO activity might gather momentum…

In personal finance news, Mobile millennial millionaires pose threat to wealth managers (Financial Times, Josh Spero) highlights challenges faced by wealth managers who are

increasingly seeing rich millennials take flight (in terms of tax residence), according to consultancy Capgemini. 25% of millennials with over $1m in investable assets said that they’d moved in 2024 and another 25% said they’re planning to relocate in 2025. This is bad news for wealth managers who are seeing an exodus of clients. It was also interesting to note from the Capgemini survey that 81% of those who were going to inherit wealth intended “to switch their parents’ wealth management firm within one to two years after inheritance” – and this is prompting wealth managers to change their strategies by offering more access to crypto assets, developing AI-enabled digital platforms and raising the quality of their relationship managers. Another challenge they are facing is identified in Living longer — the ‘fundamental financial challenge’ (Financial Times, Moira O’Neill) which cites research from professional services firm Barnett Waddingham that shows that people underestimate how long they are likely to live after they retire, meaning that their finances can be exposed. The research analysed data on people in defined benefit pension schemes. Women under such schemes tended to underestimate their life expectancy by seven years while men underestimated by four years. Wealth advisors now tend to model a couple’s cash flow up to the age of 93 while one firm even models to 100.

Then in How £7 pints are destroying Britain’s pubs (Daily Telegraph, Daniel Woolfson) we see that rising beer prices powered by higher food, fuel and labour costs – not to mention the price of beer itself – have combined to hit pubs badly. Even though customers are increasingly becoming more understanding about why this is necessary, everyone has a limit – and publicans are wondering whether we’re reaching it. The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) says that the average price of a pint across the UK breached the £5 mark for the first time this year, but many say that the real figure is more like £7, particularly if it’s premium. Are we that far off from a tenner a pint??

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