In that role, Mr. Lutnick has twisted the arms of American allies, dangling policy favors in exchange for investments in U.S. industrial projects. At times, these tactics have created opportunities for his family's clients to gain access to much-needed foreign capital, The Times found. Mr. Lutnick, for example, demanded that the South Korean government invest billions of dollars in U.S. industry to reduce tariffs. Mr. Neugebauer is vying for a share of those investment dollars to build the data center that Mr. Lutnick's family is also helping to finance. The job of commerce secretary has always been to promote American industry through deal-making at home and abroad, and the position has traditionally been populated with titans of industry who were expected to bring a business sensibility to meetings filled with career government workers.

In the old Camden Town Hall opposite London's St Pancras station, away from the white tie and tails of the pageantry at Windsor Castle, was perhaps the most substantive display of the consequences of Donald Trump's state visit. In front of Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, many members of the British and US cabinets and the cream of the European tech industry, a highly-crafted video played, featuring the long history of UK science. It included George Stephenson, Charles Babbage, Ada Lovelace, Alan Turing and Sir Demis Hassabis, with dozens of UK start-up companies from every corner of the country listed. It was a cross between a UK government investment promotion video and the Danny Boyle 2012 Olympic Opening Ceremony, except for one crucial detail - it was voiced by Jensen Huang, the American Nvidia artificial intelligence (AI) and microchip magnate. This week, Trump said the tech tycoon was taking over the world and the boss of the company, which hit a market value of $4tn (£2.9tn) this summer, appears to have gone all-in on the UK in quite an extraordinary way.

Just before the weekend, the US Customs and Border Protection published a list of products excluded from Trump's tariffs, including smartphones, PCs, memory chips and let's say 80 percent of everything we write about at Engadget. However, that's more because they'll be siloed into a specific product category. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an interview on Sunday: "Those products are going to be part of the semiconductor sectoral tariffs, which are coming." The new exclusions would exempt many devices and parts from both the 10 percent global tariff and the steeper tariff on China. Lutnick told ABC News' Jonathan Karl that, in doing this, the president was "just making sure everyone understood that all of these products are outside the reciprocal tariffs and they are going to have their own separate way of being considered."

"Face the Nation" host Margaret Brennan asked Trump Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick whether AI helped construct some of the tariff policies. CBS' Margaret Brennan asked Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick whether artificial intelligence was involved in designing President Donald Trump's broad tariff policies on Sunday. The "Face the Nation" host confronted Lutnick on Trump's "Liberation Day" announcement, which saw significant tariff increases across numerous countries. This included a baseline tariff of 10% on all U.S. imports that began on Saturday. The announcement caused chaos for investors as the stock market suffered some of its worst losses since the COVID pandemic in 2020.

Paolo Ardoino, CEO of the cryptocurrency company Tether, was flying over Switzerland last week as he contemplated the changing regulatory landscape. Tether used to be at war with the establishment. Now it is the establishment. The crypto giant – tether is the most traded cryptocurrency in the world – has had a strange trip. Four years ago, banks were dropping Tether as a client, and regulators in New York had the company against the wall over questions about commingled client and corporate funds.