Top South Korean Official in US Again as Tariff Deadline Looms
Why the Federal Reserve's Building Renovation Costs $2.5 Billion
Milan Corruption Probe Casts Shadow Over Property Boom
How San Jose's Mayor Is Working to Build an AI Capital
Wi Sung-lac departed for the US 'to engage in various negotiations with US officials,' Woo Sang-ho, a senior presidential secretary, told reporters Sunday. 'This may not be the last time, and it could continue,' Woo said, adding that the top security official 'will visit the US whenever he deems it necessary for the overall negotiations.'
While it remains unclear who Wi is scheduled to meet in Washington, the trip is widely viewed as a bid to bridge differences and finalize a trade agreement with the US, South Korea's biggest source of trade surplus. Talks have been delayed by months of political gridlock in Seoul, leaving South Korea racing to catch up on lost negotiating time.
The US is preparing to impose 25% across-the-board tariffs on South Korean goods starting Aug. 1, up from the current 10%. In addition, sector-specific duties targeting cars, steel, and aluminum remain in place.
President Lee Jae Myung's new ministers for foreign affairs, finance and industry took office Monday after winning rare bipartisan support amid growing concerns over a lack of a deal. The main opposition People Power Party said they approved Lee's picks because the US tariff negotiations could no longer be delayed with the country's economy hinging on the talks' results.
Wi said South Korea's goal is to lower the tariffs by some percentage points, local media Hankyoreh reported citing Wi's comments before his departure. Newly appointed Foreign Minister Cho Hyun and Finance Minister Koo Yun-cheol are also arranging a US visit, Yonhap News said.
The diplomatic push comes as the Lee administration rolled out a 31.8 trillion won ($23.3 billion) supplementary budget to bolster growth and mitigate trade-related risks. South Korea's economy contracted in the first quarter, and the central bank has cut interest rates to 2.5% while slashing its growth forecast to 0.8%.
A Rebel Army Is Building a Rare-Earth Empire on China's Border
Thailand's Changing Cannabis Rules Leave Farmers in a Tough Spot
How Starbucks' CEO Plans to Tame the Rush-Hour Free-for-All
Elon Musk's Empire Is Creaking Under the Strain of Elon Musk
What the Tough Job Market for New College Grads Says About the Economy
©2025 Bloomberg L.P.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Forbes
6 minutes ago
- Forbes
Retrospective: Musing On Crypto Christmas In July
Bitcoin. Golden digital cryptocurrency sign in the white gift box with red tied bow. The best gift ever. 3d illustration isolated on the white background. getty Many Americans across the country commemorated 'Christmas in July' last month. It would not be an exaggeration to note that the crypto industry marked the symbolic season with a most festive 31 days. On the last day of July, Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins and Commissioner Hester M. Peirce unveiled "Project Crypto' to create a pathway to make America the crypto capital of the world. On the 30th day, the President's Working Group on Digital Asset Markets released their report to usher in the Golden Age of Crypto. The middle of July was branded as Crypto Week, which culminated in landmark stablecoin legislation being enacted into law. Sleigh bells rang on the 1oth of July, as the U.S. Senate confirmed Jonathan Gould to serve as Comptroller of the Currency. However, the nomination of Brian Quintenz to Chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission has faced multiple delays. There were also quite a few crypto stocking stuffers throughout the month. The controversial crypto broker rule was finally officially eliminated by the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, Federal Reserve Board, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency issued a joint statement on risk-management considerations for crypto-asset safekeeping. 'The agencies recognize that crypto-asset custodians may provide other custody services while safekeeping crypto-assets.' Prosperity Now, Blockchain Foundation, Intersect Public Affairs launched a national, first-of-its-kind, research initiative funded by W.K. Kellogg Foundation to examine how CDFIs and MDIs, which serve rural and urban geographic areas, are assessing digital assets. August is certainly stirring, but is expected to be a silent month for crypto with Congress taking off for summer recess. The author is Executive Director of Blockchain Foundation, which is a partner of the research study.
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Big tech has spent $155bn on AI this year. It's about to spend hundreds of billions more
The US's largest companies have spent 2025 locked in a competition to spend more money than one another, lavishing $155bn on the development of artificial intelligence, more than the US government has spent on education, training, employment and social services in the 2025 fiscal year so far. Based on the most recent financial disclosures of Silicon Valley's biggest players, the race is about to accelerate to hundreds of billions in a single year. Over the past two weeks, Meta, Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet, Google's parent, have shared their quarterly public financial reports. Each disclosed that their year-to-date capital expenditure, a figure that refers to the money companies spend to acquire or upgrade tangible assets, already totals tens of billions. Capex, as the term is abbreviated, is a proxy for technology companies' spending on AI because the technology requires gargantuan investments in physical infrastructure, namely data centers, which require large amounts of power, water and expensive semiconductor chips. Google said during its most recent earnings call that its capital expenditure 'primarily reflects investments in servers and data centers to support AI'. Meta's year-to-date capital expenditure amounted to $30.7bn, doubling the $15.2bn figure from the same time last year, per its earnings report. For the most recent quarter alone, the company spent $17bn on capital expenditures, also double the same period in 2024, $8.5bn. Alphabet reported nearly $40bn in capex to date for the first two quarters of the current fiscal year, and Amazon reported $55.7bn. Microsoft said it would spend more than $30bn in the current quarter to build out the data centers powering its AI services. Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said the current quarter's capex would be at least 50% more than the outlay during the same period a year earlier and greater than the company's record capital expenditures of $24.2bn in the quarter to June. 'We will continue to invest against the expansive opportunity ahead,' Hood said. For the coming fiscal year, big tech's total capital expenditure is slated to balloon enormously, surpassing the already eye-popping sums of the previous year. Microsoft plans to unload about $100bn on AI in the next fiscal year, CEO Satya Nadella said Wednesday. Meta plans to spend between $66bn and $72bn. Alphabet plans to spend $85bn, significantly higher than its previous estimation of $75bn. Amazon estimated that its 2025 expenditure would come to $100bn as it plows money into Amazon Web Services, which analysts now expect to amount to $118bn. In total, the four tech companies will spend more than $400bn on capex in the coming year, according to the Wall Street Journal. The multibillion-dollar figures represent mammoth investments, which the Journal points out is larger than the European Union's quarterly spending on defense. However, the tech giants can't seem to spend enough for their investors. Microsoft, Google and Meta informed Wall Street analysts last quarter that their total capex would be higher than previously estimated. In the case of all three companies, investors were thrilled, and shares in each company soared after their respective earnings calls. Microsoft's market capitalization hit $4tn the day after its report. Even Apple, the cagiest of the tech giants, signaled that it would boost its spending on AI in the coming year by a major amount, either via internal investments or acquisitions. The company's quarterly capex rose to $3.46bn, up from $2.15bn during the same period last year. The iPhone maker reported blockbuster earnings Thursday, with rebounding iPhone sales and better-than-expected business in China, but it is still seen as lagging farthest behind on development and deployment of AI products among the tech giants. Tim Cook, Apple's CEO, said Thursday that the company was reallocating a 'fair number' of employees to focus on artificial intelligence and that the 'heart of our AI strategy' is to increase investments and 'embed' AI across all of its devices and platforms. Cook refrained from disclosing exactly how much Apple is spending, however. 'We are significantly growing our investment, I'm not putting specific numbers behind that,' he said. Smaller players are trying to keep up with the incumbents' massive spending and capitalize on the gold rush. OpenAI announced at the end of the week of earnings that it had raised $8.3bn in investment, part of a planned $40bn round of funding, valuing the startup, whose ChatGPT chatbot kicked in 2022, at $300bn. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
19 minutes ago
- Yahoo
3 Growth Stocks to Invest $1,000 in Right Now
Key Points Amazon's core e-commerce business remains remarkably resilient and continues to dominate the global retail landscape. Nvidia remains the undisputed leader in supplying the advanced chips powering today's artificial intelligence revolution. Meta Platforms leads the social media landscape, operating three of the world's top-five most-used platforms and reaching 3.4 billion daily users. 10 stocks we like better than Nvidia › The last year has been a wild ride for many investors, with a huge swing down in the market in the spring before rocketing back up to today's highs. For investors who want to keep that momentum going, here are four growth-focused companies that would be a smart place to park $1,000. Amazon continues to dominate With all the tariff drama, it makes sense that investors have been a bit wary of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) compared to its big tech rivals. I think this fear is overblown. Yes, the trade war between the U.S. and China could reignite, and this would definitely impact Amazon's business, but any disruptions would more than likely be temporary. The fact is, Amazon's e-commerce business is highly resilient, and I don't see its dominance meaningfully threatened. Amazon enjoys a moat that few companies in history have. It is hard to overstate how ingrained it is in the daily lives of consumers across the globe. And beyond its retail business, Amazon Web Services (AWS) -- the company's cloud service -- continues to thrive, growing rapidly in the age of artificial intelligence (AI); revenue was up 17% year over year in the first quarter of 2025. CEO Andy Jassy recently drove home the potential of AWS, saying in an earnings call, "before this generation of AI, we thought AWS had the chance to ultimately be a multi-hundred-billion-dollar revenue run rate business. We now think it could be even larger." Nvidia is still on top It's no secret that the most dominant company leading the most dominant industry is Nvidia (NASDAQ: NVDA). Data centers across the globe, especially those running today's most advanced AI models, are filled to the brim with the company's advanced graphics processing units (GPUs). Thus far, no other chipmaker managed to rival Nvidia when it comes to delivering the most advanced GPUs needed to power modern AI, and although competitors like Advanced Micro Devices have begun to make some headway, Nvidia is still miles ahead. It also has an incredible amount of capital -- dollars and people -- to deploy in defending its lead. While this would already be a substantial moat, Nvidia's CUDA architecture provides it with an incredible advantage. This is a key component, and although it's definitely talked about, it remains poorly understood by investors given its importance. Without going into too much detail, CUDA is essentially a software layer upon which most AI technology is built. If a company is already in Nvidia's ecosystem, switching to rival chips would require the overhaul of their entire workflow, making them unlikely to leave. As a result, Nvidia's ecosystem keeps clients loyal and willing to pay a premium. Meta Platforms dominates social media Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) is the undisputed leader in social media. Of the top five most used social media platforms in the world, Meta has No. 1, 3, and 4 in Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. All told, its platforms are actively used by more than 3.4 billion people around the world on a daily basis. This massive user base continues to fuel massive growth for the tech behemoth. Its latest quarterly earnings showed a 22% jump in sales year over year (YOY) and a 38% jump in net income. To capitalize on its success, the company is investing aggressively in its future -- especially in AI -- where its enormous and engaged user base gives Meta a unique advantage. It has access to vast amounts of data to train its models and a captive audience to roll out its AI products to. And unlike some in the AI space, Meta also has the financial strength to continue investing even if the short-term return is less than stellar. Should you invest $1,000 in Nvidia right now? Before you buy stock in Nvidia, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the for investors to buy now… and Nvidia wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $625,254!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,090,257!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 1,036% — a market-crushing outperformance compared to 181% for the S&P 500. Don't miss out on the latest top 10 list, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the 10 stocks » *Stock Advisor returns as of July 29, 2025 Johnny Rice has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Amazon, Meta Platforms, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. 3 Growth Stocks to Invest $1,000 in Right Now was originally published by The Motley Fool
