Trump's diktat to Google, Microsoft, and other tech giants, asks them to stop Indian…, rules about H-1B visa might…
Donald Trump said that we want companies like Google, Microsoft to give priority to American workers as this is in the interest of the country. Trump criticized the globalist mind set of tech companies and said that Americans should get jobs first. According to Trump, companies are killing the rights of American talent by investing money on factories and employees abroad.
Trump made these comments at the AI Summit held in Washington DC on 23 July. How will it affect India's tech sector?
India's IT sector may be affected by this statement as Google, Microsoft and other tech companies have millions of employees in India. These companies run large offices in cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, and Pune.
Apart from this, according to US Citizenship and Immigration Services, in 2023, 72% of H-1B visas were given to Indians, mostly in areas like data science, Artificial Intelligence, and cyber security.
Trump's policy may make H-1B visa rules more stringent, making it difficult for Indian tech professionals to get jobs in the US. Also, due to less new recruitment in India, pressure on IT companies and startups will increase. When Trump threatened Apple CEO Tim Cook
Earlier in May, Trump had threatened Apple about making iPhones in India as he said that iPhones sold in the USA should be manufactured in the US, not in India or any other country.
Trump said that he has previously directly told Apple CEO Tim Cook that if Apple does not make iPhones in the US, a tariff of at least 25% will be imposed on the company. After this threat from Trump, Apple's stock fell 4% to $193.
However, despite Trump's threat to Apple, 78% of iPhones sold in the USA are being made in India.
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Economic Times
30 minutes ago
- Economic Times
Market in consolidation mode; triggers needed, says Sunil Subramaniam
Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads "Another reason for pharma's past underperformance is that FIIs were driving the selling pressure. They closely track export-oriented sectors. So the recent post-results bounce in pharma is largely driven by DIIs. FIIs still haven't firmed up their stance on India. They remain a bit cautious, especially because the delay in the BTA (Bilateral Trade Agreement) hasn't helped sentiment," says Sunil Subramaniam , Market like you said, the question is—why were they under pressure in the first place? I'd call it the Trump effect. Mr. Trump has been talking a lot about imposing heavy pharma tariffs. He hasn't actually done anything yet, but every time he makes such statements, it creates nervousness—whether he's targeting CDMO players or generics, and how he plans to go about it. That uncertainty has impacted the pharma sector, putting it under when individual companies are reporting good numbers, the market has no choice but to buy into them—because at least those companies are indicating a positive outlook. Plus, some of them may not even be impacted by tariffs, creating a window of opportunity. Also, the pharma space includes domestic-oriented businesses like hospitals and diagnostics, which are unaffected by U.S. tariff issues. So overall, pharma remains a defensive reason for pharma's past underperformance is that FIIs were driving the selling pressure. They closely track export-oriented sectors. So the recent post-results bounce in pharma is largely driven by DIIs. FIIs still haven't firmed up their stance on India. They remain a bit cautious, especially because the delay in the BTA (Bilateral Trade Agreement) hasn't helped we need to understand the market's movement over the last three months. Post-March, FIIs were actually buyers in April and May, and even in June, though to a lesser extent. Meanwhile, if you look at the end of March, mutual fund DIIs—especially domestic mutual funds—had built up cash positions to around 7.25% of their April and May, both mutual funds and FIIs were buying, which supported the market. But starting this month, mutual fund cash levels are back down to around 5%, which is close to their lower limit. That means DIIs don't have as much cash left to deploy, apart from the fresh SIP looking at last earnings season and market levels, domestic funds have largely deployed their cash. FIIs, on the other hand, had expected some action around the BTA by July 9, which then got pushed to August 1. But now, even that deadline seems unlikely to be met. The Indian trade delegation has returned from the U.S. without a deal. Sticking points remain—like agriculture—and they won't be easy to the question now is whether Trump will extend the 10% tariff pause beyond August 1 or slap a 26% tariff on India and then negotiate, like he did with Japan—imposing higher tariffs first and then signing a deal at 19%. That kind of uncertainty around the India-U.S. BTA is keeping FIIs factor is China. While China and the U.S. haven't signed a full BTA either, they seem to have reached some understanding. Meanwhile, China's markets have been beaten down so much that the one-year forward P/E is around 11—compared to India's 22. And China's economy is about 4.5 times larger than India's. Even at 4% growth, those are big numbers. So FIIs are starting to see more value in China, pulling some attention away from as for your question on the next trigger—clearly, a breakthrough on the BTA front, like an interim deal or assurance that tariffs will be capped below 20%, could bring FIIs back. On the domestic side, it's the ongoing earnings season. Results have been mixed. The IT sector, for instance, didn't post terrible earnings, but weak guidance is weighing heavily, especially in the absence of FII DIIs have already used most of their cash, their incremental buying will depend on the inflow from SIPs and earnings results. So companies with strong earnings and forward guidance will likely get DII if the early festival season gives good signs on the consumption front, that could also be a positive trigger. Until then, expect the market to remain in a sideways, consolidative phase for some time.
India Today
30 minutes ago
- India Today
Tech layoffs: TCS, Microsoft, Intel among 5 slashing thousands of jobs in apparent AI restructure
Several global tech companies, including TCS, Microsoft, Intel, Meta, and Panasonic, are laying off thousands of employees this year as they adjust to changing business needs and the growing influence of artificial intelligence (AI). While some companies say the cuts are tied to efficiency and restructuring, others like TCS are pointing to internal challenges such as skill mismatches. Here is everything you need to know about the latest set of layoffsTata Consultancy Services (TCS), India's biggest IT firm, is reducing its global workforce by about 2 per cent, which could affect around 12,000 employees. However, the company insists this move is not due to AI-based productivity gains. In a recent interview, TCS CEO K Krithivasan clarified to Money Control that the layoffs are happening because of limited options to redeploy employees who do not match current project requirements. He said the company is still actively hiring and training people, but some roles, especially at mid and senior levels, are hard to explained that while over 5.5 lakh employees have been trained in basic digital skills and nearly 1 lakh in advanced technologies, some senior professionals are struggling to adapt beyond the initial training levels. As a result, the company is finding it difficult to deploy them job cuts Microsoft, too, has let go of more than 15,000 employees this year. On top of that, around 2,000 workers labelled as underperformers have also exited the company. This comes even as Microsoft is reporting strong earnings and hitting record-high stock prices. In a memo to employees, CEO Satya Nadella acknowledged the layoffs and said he understands how difficult this period has been for everyone. Despite the company's solid financial health, he said restructuring is necessary to stay aligned with long-term goals, especially as Microsoft continues to invest heavily, around $80 billion — in building AI job cutsIntel is making one of the biggest cuts this year, with plans to reduce its workforce by about 24,000 employees — roughly a quarter of its total staff. The decision was announced during the company's quarterly earnings update. Intel's new CEO, Lip-Bu Tan, said the company is focusing on becoming leaner and more efficient after overbuilding in areas where demand didn't materialise as expected. As part of this shift, Intel is cancelling some of its factory projects in Germany and Poland, and is moving some work from Costa Rica to Vietnam — impacting around 2,000 employees in Costa Rica layoffsMeanwhile, Meta has made fresh job cuts in its Reality Labs division, which looks after its VR and AR products, including games for its Quest headsets. While the company did not share exact numbers, teams working on some notable projects like the Supernatural fitness app were affected. Meta said the goal is to streamline operations and improve focus on future mixed reality experiences. Earlier this year, Meta had also cut 5 percent of its workforce in a separate round, targeting underperforming layoffsadvertisementJapanese tech giant Panasonic has also joined the list, with a plan to cut 10,000 jobs as part of a broader effort to reduce costs and invest more in future technologies like AI. About half of these cuts will be in Japan, with the rest overseas. CEO Yuki Kusumi said the company is shifting away from slower segments like TVs and some industrial products, and expressed regret over the decision but emphasised that these steps are necessary for long-term growth.- Ends
Indian Express
30 minutes ago
- Indian Express
The chatbot culture wars are here
For much of the past decade, America's partisan culture warriors have fought over the contested territory of social media — arguing about whether the rules on Facebook and Twitter were too strict or too lenient, whether YouTube and TikTok censored too much or too little and whether Silicon Valley tech companies were systematically silencing right-wing voices. Those battles aren't over. But a new one has already started. This fight is over artificial intelligence, and whether the outputs of leading AI chatbots such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini are politically biased. Conservatives have been taking aim at AI companies for months. In March, House Republicans subpoenaed a group of leading AI developers, probing them for information about whether they colluded with the Biden administration to suppress right-wing speech. And this month, Missouri's Republican attorney general, Andrew Bailey, opened an investigation into whether Google, Meta, Microsoft and OpenAI are leading a 'new wave of censorship' by training their AI systems to give biased responses to questions about President Donald Trump. On Wednesday, Trump himself joined the fray, issuing an executive order on what he called 'woke AI.' 'Once and for all, we are getting rid of woke,' he said in a speech. 'The American people do not want woke Marxist lunacy in the AI models, and neither do other countries.' The order was announced alongside a new White House AI action plan that will require AI developers that receive federal contracts to ensure that their models' outputs are 'objective and free from top-down ideological bias.' Republicans have been complaining about AI bias since at least early last year, when a version of Google's Gemini AI system generated historically inaccurate images of the American Founding Fathers, depicting them as racially diverse. That incident drew the fury of online conservatives, and led to accusations that leading AI companies were training their models to parrot liberal ideology. Since then, top Republicans have mounted pressure campaigns to try to force AI companies to disclose more information about how their systems are built, and tweak their chatbots' outputs to reflect a broader set of political views. Now, with the White House's executive order, Trump and his allies are using the threat of taking away lucrative federal contracts — OpenAI, Anthropic, Google and xAI were recently awarded Defense Department contracts worth as much as $200 million — to try to force AI companies to address their concerns. The order directs federal agencies to limit their use of AI systems to those that put a priority on 'truth-seeking' and 'ideological neutrality' over disfavored concepts such as diversity, equity and inclusion. It also directs the Office of Management and Budget to issue guidance to agencies about which systems meet those criteria. If this playbook sounds familiar, it's because it mirrors the way Republicans have gone after social media companies for years — using legal threats, hostile congressional hearings and cherry-picked examples to pressure companies into changing their policies, or removing content they don't like. Critics of this strategy call it 'jawboning,' and it was the subject of a high-profile Supreme Court case last year. In that case, Murthy v. Missouri, it was Democrats who were accused of pressuring social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter to take down posts on topics such as the coronavirus vaccine and election fraud, and Republicans challenging their tactics as unconstitutional. (In a 6-3 decision, the court rejected the challenge, saying the plaintiffs lacked standing.) Now, the parties have switched sides. Republican officials, including several Trump administration officials I spoke to who were involved in the executive order, are arguing that pressuring AI companies through the federal procurement process is necessary to stop AI developers from putting their thumbs on the scale. Is that hypocritical? Sure. But recent history suggests that working the refs this way can be effective. Meta ended its long-standing fact-checking program this year, and YouTube changed its policies in 2023 to allow more election denial content. Critics of both changes viewed them as capitulation to right-wing critics. This time around, the critics cite examples of AI chatbots that seemingly refuse to praise Trump, even when prompted to do so, or Chinese-made chatbots that refuse to answer questions about the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. They believe developers are deliberately baking a left-wing worldview into their models, one that will be dangerously amplified as AI is integrated into fields such as education and health care. There are a few problems with this argument, according to legal and tech policy experts I spoke to. The first, and most glaring, is that pressuring AI companies to change their chatbots' outputs may violate the First Amendment. In recent cases like Moody v. NetChoice, the Supreme Court has upheld the rights of social media companies to enforce their own content moderation policies. And courts may reject the Trump administration's argument that it is trying to enforce a neutral standard for government contractors, rather than interfering with protected speech. 'What it seems like they're doing is saying, 'If you're producing outputs we don't like, that we call biased, we're not going to give you federal funding that you would otherwise receive,'' Genevieve Lakier, a law professor at the University of Chicago, said. 'That seems like an unconstitutional act of jawboning.' There is also the problem of defining what, exactly, a 'neutral' or 'unbiased' AI system is. Today's AI chatbots are complex, probability-based systems that are trained to make predictions, not give hard-coded answers. Two ChatGPT users may see wildly different responses to the same prompts, depending on variables like their chat histories and which versions of the model they're using. And testing an AI system for bias isn't as simple as feeding it a list of questions about politics and seeing how it responds. Samir Jain, a vice president of policy at the Center for Democracy and Technology, a nonprofit civil liberties group, said the Trump administration's executive order would set 'a really vague standard that's going to be impossible for providers to meet.' There is also a technical problem with telling AI systems how to behave. Namely, they don't always listen. Just ask Elon Musk. For years, Musk has been trying to create an AI chatbot, Grok, that embodies his vision of a rebellious, 'anti-woke' truth seeker. But Grok's behavior has been erratic and unpredictable. At times, it adopts an edgy, far-right personality, or spouts antisemitic language in response to user prompts. (For a brief period last week, it referred to itself as 'Mecha-Hitler.') At other times, it acts like a liberal — telling users, for example, that human-made climate change is real, or that the right is responsible for more political violence than the left. Recently, Musk has lamented that AI systems have a liberal bias that is 'tough to remove, because there is so much woke content on the internet.' Nathan Lambert, a research scientist at the Allen Institute for AI, told me that 'controlling the many subtle answers that an AI will give when pressed is a leading-edge technical problem, often governed in practice by messy interactions made between a few earlier decisions.' It's not, in other words, as straightforward as telling an AI chatbot to be less woke. And while there are relatively simple tweaks that developers could make to their chatbots — such as changing the 'model spec,' a set of instructions given to AI models about how they should act — there's no guarantee that these changes will consistently produce the behavior conservatives want. But asking whether the Trump administration's new rules can survive legal challenges, or whether AI developers can actually build chatbots that comply with them, may be beside the point. These campaigns are designed to intimidate. And faced with the potential loss of lucrative government contracts, AI companies, like their social media predecessors, may find it easier to give in than to fight. 'Even if the executive order violates the First Amendment, it may very well be the case that no one challenges it,' Lakier said. 'I'm surprised by how easily these powerful companies have folded.'
