Good morning. President Trump’s sudden turn against Russia has been met with skepticism from officials in his administration and European capitals who say he has done little since returning to office to punish the Kremlin for failing to end its war on Ukraine.

Trump has given Russian President Vladimir Putin an Aug. 8 deadline to reach a cease-fire with Kyiv, shortening a 50-day deadline he had set. Failure to stop the fighting would lead to secondary tariffs on countries that buy Russian energy, Trump has threatened, namely India and China.

• Deadline: In a social-media post Wednesday, Trump said India on Aug. 1 would start paying a tariff rate of 25% plus an extra penalty for its Russian energy purchases.
   
• More pressure: U.S. officials and Trump confidants say he realized he couldn’t count on his working relationship with Putin to broker a deal. Now, Trump believes pressuring Russia is the best chance to end the war, those people said, in addition to a slew of weapons sales to European nations earmarked for Ukraine’s battlefield.
   
• Some doubts: Even Trump has expressed doubts that any additional measures he might implement against Putin’s Russia would have real teeth or staying power. “I don’t know if it’s going to affect Russia, because he wants to obviously probably keep the war going,” Trump told reporters Tuesday aboard Air Force One. “But we’re going to put on tariffs and the various things that you put on. It may or may not affect them, but it could.”

Tech giants are revising AI product claims that faced scrutiny.

Apple, Google, Microsoft and Samsung have been revising or retracting certain claims about their newest, hottest artificial intelligence products.

The tech giants made the changes over the past year in response to a probe by an ad-industry self-regulatory group into whether marketers are overstating the capabilities or availability of AI features.

The Federal Trade Commission has also been studying the sector’s advertising, in September announcing several legal complaints as part of a crackdown it called Operation AI Comply.

White House urges new crypto anti-money-laundering requirements.

The Trump administration is pushing Congress to create tailored anti-money-laundering reporting requirements for cryptocurrency companies and others operating in the digital asset space.

Congress should amend the Bank Secrecy Act—which governs how banks report illicit financial activity to regulators—to create customized financial institution categories that more accurately capture the types of actors in the digital asset space, administration officials said in a report published Wednesday.

• Columbia University is fending off hackers by going back to basics.
   
• The U.S. sanctioned a fourth Chinese refinery and crude oil terminal for purchasing Iranian petroleum, expanding its crackdown on what officials call China’s “teapot” refineries that help fund Iran’s nuclear ambitions and support for terrorist groups.
   
• GE Healthcare, a medical device maker spun off from General Electric in 2023, said it is no longer facing foreign-bribery investigations from U.S. regulators related to its business in China.
   
• President Trump sent letters to 17 pharmaceutical companies on Thursday asking them to lower costs of drugs for U.S. consumers to the lowest price offered in other developed nations, following up on an executive order issued in May.
   
• The U.S. will end the so-called “de minimis” tariff loophole that allows goods under $800 to enter the country duty-free, the White House said.

Trump’s tariffs questioned by appeals court.

Federal appeals judges on Thursday grilled a Trump administration lawyer over the White House’s use of emergency powers to impose worldwide tariffs, pushing back against the president’s claims that a 1977 law addressing economic emergencies gives him the ability to rewrite the tariff schedule.

Justice Department attorney Brett Shumate told the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit that in granting the president the power to “regulate” imports during national emergencies, Congress included the power to impose tariffs as he saw fit. But several members of the court cited both statutes and court precedents suggesting that lawmakers had allowed at most only small adjustments to congressionally set tariffs in response to discrete threats.

• Trump’s Tariffs: Where He Started, What He Threatened, Where He Ended Up
• Why Ford’s Made-in-America Strategy Hurts It in Trump’s Trade War

• DSV, one of the world’s largest logistics companies, is pulling back on investments along the U.S.-Mexico border because of a slowdown in trade caused by tariffs.
   
• Millions of student-loan borrowers are bracing for significantly higher monthly payments after the Trump administration moved to wind down one of the federal government’s most affordable repayment options.
   
• Unemployment remained at historic lows in the eurozone at the end of the second quarter, adding to signs of economic resilience.
   
• U.S. trade talks with Canada have involved the level of aluminum tariffs as some U.S. manufacturers, most notably Ford Motor, are dealing with a financial hit, according to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
   
• Sweden called for the European Union to immediately freeze the trade component of the EU-Israel Association Agreement, joining Belgium and the Netherlands in escalating pressure over the humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
   
• Sentiment among Southeast Asian manufacturers fell to its lowest level since the pandemic, with confidence slipping to a five-year low amid trade policy uncertainty and subdued demand.

• Here’s how companies are dealing with $50 billion of new tariffs.
   
• Just weeks after the AI boom produced the first $4 trillion company, it has minted a second.
   
• American Eagle’s male-geared Sydney Sweeney ads have Gen Z women scratching their heads.
   
• President Trump is building a Mar-a-Lago style ballroom at the White House, a $200 million addition to the East Wing that marks the former builder’s latest and most ambitious makeover of the complex.
   
• The SEC is launching "Project Crypto" to bolster the digital-asset industry in the U.S.
   
• New York City’s problem-plagued subways were worse than usual this week thanks to a combination of power issues and signal problems—but it’s nothing new for frustrated commuters.
   
• Lawmakers in both houses of Congress introduced legislation targeting China on Thursday, a reminder of Capitol Hill’s deep-seated desire to punish Beijing over human rights even as President Trump gives priority to a trade deal.
   
• El Salvador’s ruling-party legislators pushed through constitutional changes eliminating presidential term limits and allowing President Nayib Bukele, who is serving his second term, to run an unlimited number of times.

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