Good morning. Executives from cryptocurrency exchange Binance met with Treasury Department officials last month and discussed loosening U.S. government oversight on the company, while it was also exploring a business deal with a Trump family crypto venture, according to people familiar with the talks.

• What was asked: The Binance executives asked Treasury officials in Washington to remove a U.S. monitor that oversees the exchange’s compliance with anti-money-laundering laws, some of the people said. The move would mark a first step toward returning the company, which in 2023 pleaded guilty to violating those laws, to the U.S. market.
   
• Trump family connections: Binance has also been in talks to list a new dollar-pegged cryptocurrency from World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture backed by President Trump’s family, other people familiar with the discussions said. Listing the token, known as a stablecoin, could catapult it into a huge market and potentially bring in billions in profit for the family.
   
• Expanding ties: Those dealings mark the progression of a growing alliance between the Trump family and Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, which paid a record $4.3 billion fine for allowing terrorists, drug traffickers and sanctioned actors to move billions of dollars through its exchange. The Treasury talks took place after Binance had already begun discussing deals with representatives of the Trump family.
   
• What it could mean: For World Liberty, Binance’s market power could help turn it into a serious player in the crypto industry. Binance has more than 250 million users and processes some $65 billion in trades a day. For Binance, Trump’s presidential power could help free the company of its legal woes.

Investment firms are faced with a range of shifting risks, ranging from geopolitics to cybercrime and regulatory risk. Dow Jones Risk & Compliance will host a webinar on April 29 to discuss these risks with Scott Pomfret, a former chief compliance officer and Securities and Exchange Commission trial attorney. You can register here.

Paul Atkins’ leadership at SEC excites crypto industry, concerns watchdogs.

The cryptocurrency sector is looking to turn a new chapter in the U.S. after the confirmation of a pro-industry pick to lead the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, reports Risk Journal's Mengqi Sun.

Paul Atkins, a previous SEC commissioner during the George W. Bush administration, is expected to ease oversight and set clear rules for the crypto sector to operate in the U.S., policy observers said. Along those lines, Mark Uyeda, acting SEC chairman, said in recorded remarks at an agency event Friday that cryptocurrency regulation could be made more “accommodating,” floating a short-term exemption to the normal rules for digital asset companies.

But some public interest watchdogs remain concerned Atkins’s extensive ties to the crypto industry could mean more deregulation and weaker investor protections.

Trump administration retreats from white-collar criminal enforcement

The Trump administration is retreating from some types of white-collar law enforcement, including cases involving foreign bribery, public corruption, money laundering and crypto markets. In some cases, the administration is effectively redefining what business conduct constitutes a crime.

A few themes are emerging: Prosecuting executives for wrongdoing that doesn’t have obvious victims is out. The Justice Department is open to arguments that a defendant has been targeted for political reasons, or that some prosecutions undermine economic competitiveness and national-security interests. And political connections within Trump’s world seem to matter.

• A batch of large law firms have agreed to deals with the White House that would avert restrictions on their business by promising to do roughly $600 million of pro bono work that President Trump supports.
   
• Recent efforts by the U.K. and France governments to establish a regime for regulating spyware and other surveillance technologies could mark a milestone in efforts to tackle their “proliferation and irresponsible use,” writes Risk Journal's Tom Blass, though observers say the goal of comprehensive oversight remains uncertain.
   
• Iran sought sanctions relief from the U.S. in exchange for limits on its nuclear program during indirect talks Saturday that have opened the way to more serious negotiations next week, people briefed on the meeting said.
   
• The SEC’s new bosses are considering killing or impairing a trade-tracking system that took 15 years and cost $1 billion to build, Barron’s reports.
   
• Democrats are pressing for more information on whether any people close to the Trump administration made stock trades ahead of the president’s announcement that he was pausing some tariffs.
   
• President Trump has signed an executive order to streamline foreign military sales and reevaluate missile technology export controls to “priority partners.”
   
• A former Putin-appointed governor of Russian-occupied Crimea and his brother have been convicted of breaching U.K. financial sanctions in the first successful prosecution of its kind, the U.K.’s Crown Prosecution Service announced.
   
• Ireland’s data privacy watchdog opened an investigation into Elon Musk’s Grok artificial-intelligence chatbot over concerns that the way the tool processes data might break European Union data protection law.
   
• The U.K. Treasury’s Office of Financial Sanctions Implementation has published a comprehensive threat assessment highlighting widespread sanctions evasion in the property sector.

Economic outlook dives just three months into Trump’s term.

What a difference three months makes.

Since President Trump took office, economists have dramatically slashed estimates for growth while raising them for inflation and unemployment. The main reason, according to respondents to The Wall Street Journal’s quarterly survey of economists: tariffs.

• The World Is Taking Urgent Steps to Prepare for Trade War Downturn
• ‘From Anxious to Petrified’: Consumer Sentiment Plunges Further
• Wall Street Sounds an Alarm: The Economy Is at Risk Thanks to Tariffs
• Trump’s Trade War Is Threatening to Derail the Office-Market Recovery

Shifting signals on tech tariffs fuel fresh trade uncertainty.

A string of mixed signals from the Trump administration over the weekend regarding tariffs on smartphones, laptops and other electronics fueled fresh uncertainty over U.S. trade policy, setting up another chaotic week on Wall Street and in Washington.

Tech investors briefly rejoiced when a notice from U.S. Customs and Border Protection posted late Friday said computers, tablets, Apple watches, computer monitors, semiconductor equipment and other electronics were exempt from many tariffs on Chinese products and a 10% tariff on all U.S. imports.

• What Apple Has at Stake in China
• The Companies and Markets Hit Hardest by Trump’s Tariffs
• Small Sellers of Fireworks, Ski Apparel and Other Imports Can’t Escape Tariff War
• Brazil’s Stagnant Economy Is the Poster Child for High Tariffs

• The meteoric popularity among American shoppers of China-founded app Shein was greatly helped by duty-free shipping of its ultracheap fashion. After President Trump closed that option for Chinese goods, its clothes will now bear the full impact of his new tariffs.
   
• China’s largest technology companies are moving to show support for Beijing as trade tensions with the U.S. escalate.
   
• America needs its allies and partners for what is shaping up as a protracted contest for geopolitical primacy now that President Trump has unleashed a trade war against China. They are in no rush to take sides.
   
• Russian ballistic-missile strike on the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy killed at least 34 people, Ukrainian officials said, leaving bodies strewn across a central street and marking the war’s deadliest attack on civilians this year.
   
• Turkey and Israel are working to defuse military tensions in Syria, easing the risk of conflict between two important U.S. allies that have suffered a strain in relations since the war in Gaza began in 2023.
   
• European authorities are counting on a homegrown alternative to Elon Musk's satellite internet service Starlink and its unpredictable owner.

• President Trump’s erratic and aggressive foreign policy is giving Beijing the chance to portray itself as a pillar of global stability.
   
• The threat of U.S. military intervention helped bring Iran back to the negotiating table. Its hobbled economy is likely to keep it there.
   
• Sam Bankman-Fried had hoped to win freedom by making a long-shot bid for a presidential pardon. Instead, he began the next stage of his career as a federal inmate.
   
• A key architect of the Trump administration’s campaign to slash foreign aid has left the State Department after less than three months on the job, according to U.S. officials.
   
• Col. Gen. Sergei Beseda, a secretive veteran intelligence chief, is being tapped to handle peace negotiations over Ukraine, signaling how Russian President Vladimir Putin’s spy services are supplanting the foreign ministry at high-level international negotiations.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

You can also reach us by replying to any newsletter, or by emailing our editor David Smagalla at david.smagalla@wsj.com.