President Donald Trump’s trade war is heating up once again.

In addition to a 50% tariff on Canada announced Monday, Trump plans to impose new tariffs on dozens of countries “soon,” according to U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer. The levies would replace the temporary global 10% tariff set to expire Friday—which Trump put into place after the Supreme Court struck down his “Liberation Day” tariffs. Greer suggested the new tariffs could be placed on countries as a punishment for forced labor.

Since the Supreme Court’s decision in February, the president has found new workarounds and temporary measures to restore his desired trade regime.

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First Up

  • Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said the cyclosporiasis outbreak that has sickened thousands is “under control,” claiming a source has been identified.
  • As the battle for dominance in the growing GLP-1 industry continues, Novo Nordisk, which makes Ozempic, sued Eli Lilly on Tuesday, accusing the drugmaker of misleading advertising.
  • The Trump administration has reportedly reached a nuclear deal with Saudi Arabia that will allow U.S. companies to play a key role in building out the kingdom’s civilian nuclear infrastructure.

Business + Finance

An independent investigation funded by the Gates Foundation found that the organization did not have any knowledge of or participate in Jeffrey Epstein’s alleged crimes. The investigation from law firm WilmerHale comes as billionaire Bill Gates’ relationship with the late financier faces increased scrutiny, and investigators noted that Gates Foundation employees “raised on multiple occasions the risks of associating with Epstein because of his prior conviction.”

Tech + Innovation

AI has helped automate many entry-level tasks, but unemployment is growing among younger workers—and to address it, former tech executive Clara Shih started the New Work Foundation with businessman and former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang as a founding advisor. The nonprofit is closing the information gap with educational content, an “AI jobs explorer,” and is building a free AI jobs coach.

Cybersecurity startup Twenty is now valued at $1.2 billion after a $30 million investment from Khosla Ventures, less than a year after Forbes first reported it was coming out of stealth. The company uses AI models to run hacking campaigns for the Pentagon, with cofounder and CEO Joe Lin saying the company’s goal is to “industrialize cyber warfare … where you’re able to simultaneously prosecute hundreds of targets versus one at a time.”

Daily Cover Story

American Open-Source Labs Think They Can Beat China’s Best AI Startups

Silicon Valley is racing to build homegrown alternatives to Chinese AI models.

Poolside, an early AI standout that then went quiet for 18 months, has now released a new model called Laguna that beats its American and Chinese open source competition on public benchmarks—with the very notable exception of Kimi K3, Chinese lab Moonshot’s latest AI model.

Chinese AI models are often billed as open source, but Chinese startups like Deepseek don’t publish their code or training data. Instead, they release what are called model weights, which allow models to be downloaded, run locally and fine-tuned by developers. That’s proven irresistible to startups, and increasingly, large companies that have chafed at the control OpenAI and Anthropic hold over their own closed models, as well as the mounting cost of using AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude.

There’s big money at stake for the small number of American challengers. Thinking Machines raised $2 billion on a $12 billion valuation in 2024. Last year, The Information reported that Poolside had tried to raise $2 billion, also at a $12 billion valuation. Reflection, another coding agent startup that pivoted to building open source models, raised $2.5 billion at a $25 billion valuation in March.

WHY IT MATTERS “Our aim is to ensure that there is a competitive frontier open lab in the Western world,” Reflection cofounder and CTO Ioannis Antonoglou told Forbes last week. “We want to have a flourishing open ecosystem, and we want to contribute to it.”

MORE AI Startup Reflection Inks $1 Billion Compute Deal To Challenge China’s Open Source Dominance

Facts + Comments

The World Cup drove millions of subscribers to Fox One, the streaming service that had exclusive rights to broadcast the tournament in English, data shows. But will they stick around? A major drop could be ahead, streaming market research firm Antenna noted:

2.8 million: The number of new sign-ups Fox One added in June alone

More than 2.5 times: How much bigger June’s surge was compared to the previous monthly best for Fox One, which occurred during the NFL playoffs

$485 million: How much Fox paid for the exclusive English broadcasting rights

Strategy + Success

When a company is struggling, employees often feel the squeeze. Warning signs that your employer’s bottom line could be under pressure include silent hiring freezes, delayed decision making or workers being asked to take on more administrative work. To protect yourself, audit your workflows and regular assignments to see where you can save the company money or time, and document the measurable impacts of your work.

Video

Quiz

A major television network announced a round of layoffs that included high-profile on-air personalities. Which network is it?

A. CNN

B. NBC

C. ABC

D. ESPN

Check your answer.

Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.