Trump administration reportedly considering new round of ‘sweeping’ tariffs on chips
The Trump administration is reportedly considering a new round of sweeping tariffs on semiconductors – despite warnings from technology companies that the move could harm US hopes of dominating artificial intelligence.
One tariff approach under consideration would dramatically expand the number of tech products subject to the duties, hitting not just chips but potentially many of the goods made with them, such as laptops, gaming consoles or the servers that fill data centres, Politico reported on Thursday, citing eight people familiar with discussions.
US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick favours a structure that would tie foreign companies’ relief from the tariffs to investment in US chip manufacturing to fuel more domestic production, according to four of the people, Politico said.
The administration is mulling a phase-in period for the new tariffs, the four people said. They added that the framework could still be substantially revised in the coming weeks or months.
Key events
Here’s more reaction to the 981,000 young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) in the UK.
Chris Goulden, deputy chief executive of the Youth Futures Foundation, said:
This is a stark reminder that, despite small fluctuations in the data, the youth employment challenge remains a large, long-term problem. Hundreds of thousands of young people are continuing to miss out on the opportunity to earn, learn and build a secure future, leaving long-term scarring effects on their wellbeing, health and earning prospects.
Behind the statistics are young people facing real and often complex barriers to entering and staying in education, training and employment.
Jon Sparkes, chief executive of learning disability charity Mencap, said:
Today’s welcome figures are a reminder that young people are not work-shy, but it is too often the systems around them that are failing to meet their ambitions…youth unemployment is still at its highest in more than a decade.
Only around one in four adults with a learning disability has a paid job, despite the vast majority telling us they want to work. The issues – inaccessible recruitment, a postcode lottery of employment support, and employers lacking confidence – are as high as they were yesterday.
Sam Tims, lead analyst at the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, a think tank, said:
Nearly a million young people not earning or learning is the result of an economy that leaves young people behind, creates too few opportunities, and particularly fails those growing up in poverty.
It speaks to a lack of support for young people to move forward with their lives. Not only does growing up in persistent poverty more than triple the risk of being out of work or learning, inadequate income also prevents people from being able to move back into learning or earning.
He added that the review by former government minister Alan Milburn on youth unemployment must be a “turning point” for the support offered to young people.
The Jobs Guarantee scheme is a new government programme which has promised to create 90,000 fully funded jobs by 2029, a key part of the government’s £2.5bn drive to tackle high youth unemployment.
The first young people have started their jobs under the initiative. It offers a direct route into work for all 18–24-year-olds who have been claiming universal credit and looking for work for 18 months.
Roles on offer are matched to the individual’s skillset, with the government fully funding up to 25 hours paid work for six months to get young people into the labour market.
Work must be “part of the answer” to the mental health crisis among young people, the work and pensions secretary, Pat McFadden, said as he met some of the first beneficiaries of Labour’s youth jobs guarantee scheme, our economics editor Heather Stewart reported from Nottingham.
Some of the recruits were packing and labelling boxes of products to be posted out to households, and others are in administrative roles. They told McFadden about long periods of fruitless jobhunting.
A rise in cases of mental illness is widely cited as one cause for the increase in the number of young people not in education, employment or training (Neets) in recent years.
But McFadden said the reasons could run the other way, too.
Work is part of the answer. Work is good for you. It’s bad for your mental health to be sitting at home, isolated.
Ben Harrison, director of the Work Foundation at Lancaster University, a think tank, said the figures show “there are no quick fixes to the youth employment crisis” facing the UK.
And although nearly three quarters (73%) of employers recognise youth worklessness as a national crisis, according to the Work Foundation’s research, more than a third (36%) report having cut entry-level jobs in the last year. For young jobseekers, facing repeated rejection and struggling to secure a foothold in work can be particularly demoralising, he said.
Although more young people are now looking for work than a year ago, they are doing so at a particularly difficult moment to take their first steps into the labour market. Work Foundation research indicates the number of ‘starter’ jobs accessible to people entering work for the first time has fallen by 49% over the last decade, leaving only one starter vacancy for every three NEET young people nationally.
This decline in employment opportunities is critical, as without improving young people’s access to secure jobs, it will be very challenging to sustainably reduce the number of young people outside the labour market. Government and employers must therefore focus urgently on expanding the quantity and quality of entry-level opportunities available to them.
In particular, to ensure the Jobs Guarantee genuinely strengthens the first rungs on the jobs ladder for young people, it must create additional, secure jobs that provide realistic routes to sustained employment and progression. And there is scope for government to provide additional support to employers to improve recruitment, induction, mentoring and workplace adjustments to help ensure these workplace policies are not creating additional barriers to young people seeking work.
“Almost one million young people stuck out of work is a crisis which has been a decade in the making, and will take time to turn around,” warned TUC general secretary Paul Nowak.
The prime minister has rightly made getting more young people into work a priority – from strengthening vocational education to delivering greater access to work placements and training.
The evidence is crystal clear – good quality employment support, more good training places and a strong growing economy with more vacancies is what we need. Holding down workers’ rights will only hold back young people’s employment prospects.
That’s why the prime minister must keep going with measures to support young people into good quality work – including by delivering rights to guaranteed hours in full and ending the scourge of insecure work.
The government’s jobs guarantee is an important step forward too. But ministers need to put the turbo boosters on the scheme by expanding places and ending the 18-month wait.
We know that early experience of good-quality, paid work can make a huge difference to young people’s prospects across their lifetimes.
Number of young people not in work or education in UK falls from over 1 million but remains high
The number of young people not in education, employment or training has fallen in recent months after topping a million earlier this year, but remains high.
There were 981,000 young people aged 16 to 24, so-called Neets, between April to June, down 30,000 from the first quarter of the year, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Compared with the same period last year, the figure is still 30,000 higher.
The total number went over one million earlier this year for the first time in over a decade, fuelling calls for more help to get young people into work.
Alan Milburn, the Blair-era cabinet minister turned social mobility adviser, set out a hugely detailed and damning picture of what he called a “record of failure”, one that is letting down young people, when he published the first part of a government-commissioned review in late May.
Oil prices fall as Iran-Oman hold talks about strait of Hormuz, shipping traffic up
In the markets, oil prices have fallen with shipping traffic through the strait of Hormuz rising slightly despite the standoff between the US and Iran.
Iran and Oman are engaged in talks about how to manage the waterway. Brent crude, the global oil benchmark, fell as low as $86.22 a barrel this morning, and is now down 0.6% at $87.35 a barrel.
Ten commodity vessels transited the strait on Wednesday, up from eight on Tuesday, according to Reuters, citing data from Kpler. (Some ships turn off their transponders and aren’t captured in the data.)
Two medium-range fuel tankers, a liquefied petroleum gas carrier, a Panamax-sized tanker, and three handymax-sized tankers entered the strait from the Gulf of Oman. A medium-range fuel tanker, a bitumen tanker and a bulk carrier exited the waterway from the Gulf.
Iran and Oman are still working on the details of an agreement on the strait, a senior Iranian source told Reuters on Wednesday, after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said the two countries had agreed how to share the waterway and its revenue.
A tanker was hit by an unknown projectile in the waterway, causing a fire that was later put out, the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency said early on Thursday.
Meanwhile, traffic slowed for a second day at the other key waterway of the Bab el-Mandeb strait.
A total of 19 commodity vessels passed through Bab el-Mandeb on Wednesday, including six tankers that exited, including a very large crude carrier, down from 24 on the previous day, the Kpler data showed.
Call-blocking device company fined for ‘hounding’ people with nuisance calls
Alex Daniel
A company that made its money promising to protect elderly people from nuisance calls has been fined £190,000 for “hounding” them with hundreds of thousands of nuisance calls of its own.
The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) said Elderly Aids Ltd, a company selling call-blocking devices, made 758,053 cold calls between May 2024 and February 2025 to try and sell its products.
About 20 complaints were made to the ICO and the Telephone Preference Service – a service that prevents your telephone number from being shared – some of which said callers were aggressive, misleading and often failed to identify themselves.
One complainant said they were “overcharging for call blocking services that they aren’t authorised to sell – my father was persuaded to sign up to pay £139 upfront and a £6.99 monthly fee”.
The ICO described Elderly Aids Ltd’s actions as “bombarding people with the very nuisance calls it claimed to protect them from”.
When the ICO started investigating the company, Elderly Aids Ltd repeatedly ignored requests for information while continuing to cold call people.
The company also attempted to strike itself off the Companies House register once it became aware it was under scrutiny and is now registered at a default address.
Andy Curry, head of investigations at the ICO, said:
Not only did this company target vulnerable people who had explicitly asked not to be called – they harassed them to sell call-blocking devices.
EAL showed a complete disregard for the law and the people they were hounding. This penalty should serve as a clear warning to any business that thinks the law does not apply to them – we will hold them to account for both exploiting people in this way and trying to avoid accountability.
UK car production down on weaker exports, despite rise in electric cars
Car and van production in the UK declined last month because of weaker exports as well as routine summer shutdowns at some plants.
Vehicle production fell 11.6% year on year in July to 63,655 units, according to the latest figures published today by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT).
The decline reflects weaker exports, down 15.9% to 47,377 vehicles, as well as earlier scheduling of routine summer maintenance shutdowns at some plants, the industry body said.
Car production declined 10.6% to 61,767 units, as a 9.3% rise in output for UK buyers failed to offset a 15.8% fall in exports. Shipments to all major markets were down, including the EU (-15.2%), the US (-17.7%), Turkey (-18.5%), China (-36.9%) and Japan (-24.4%).
Commercial vehicle output also fell sharply, down 34.4% to 1,888 units, with deliveries to UK customers and export markets down 49.6% and 18.5% respectively.
Electrified cars were a bright spot, with output of fully electric and hybrid models recording the first monthly increase of the year, up 6.8% to 25,678 units. Electrified models accounted for more than four in 10 cars built in July, up from around three in 10 a year ago.
So far this year, UK factories have turned out just under 450,000 cars and commcercial vehicles, down 8.1% on the same period in 2025, reflecting model changeovers, the closure of a plant last year, and trade and investment uncertainty. Even so, the latest independent forecast expects UK car and light vehicle output to remain broadly stable this year, at 740,000 units, before growth resumes in 2027.
Output could still reach one million units by the turn of the decade, but only if the UK addresses its competitiveness and secures fresh model investment.
The SMMT has welcomed the government’s recently launched review of its ZEV (zero emission vehicle) mandate, as it hopes for “meaningful reforms” to the regulation that would help reduce the high cost of selling EVs in the UK.
Ben Hunt, a retail analyst at Panmure Liberum, upgraded his Halfords forecasts, saying:
Favourable summer weather has driven a meaningful 2027 upgrade, but importantly there is also a clear underlying improvement, reflecting strong exit momentum from 2026.
Management expects a more first-half-weighted profit profile, reflecting strong trading to date and increased technology and marketing investment in the second half. Even so, we believe guidance retains some prudence and would not be surprised to see further upgrades before year-end.
Longer-term we expect momentum to be sustained by further benefits from Fusion garage conversions, the return of the cycling replacement cycle and the rollout of Fusion learnings across the wider Autocentres estate.
With tyres finally showing signs of stabilisation and operational expenditure growth moderating, all areas of the P&L [profit and loss] are now moving in the same direction.
Halfords profits boosted by demand for aircon services
Alex Daniel
Halfords shares are soaring this morning after the bike and car parts retailer raised its profit forecast for the year, partly after scorching summer weather drove demand for its airconditioning services.
The company said it has seen “strong demand in seasonal categories” that was “in part reflecting unusually warm summer weather”.
A spokesperson later confirmed this included air conditioning services, such as regassing air con units, along with cycling, and touring and camping equipment. Shares jumped more than 10% on Thursday morning.
Analysts at Peel Hunt, one of Halfords’s brokers, said the warm weather added around £5m to its profit in the first half of the year, with “extremely strong” sales in the three categories.
They added:
Of course, this may be difficult to replicate next year, when presumably the weather will normalise, but it is in the bag for this year now, and this incremental c£5m is at the heart of our upgrade.
The update follows Britain’s hottest and driest summer in years, with five heatwaves and drought declared across large parts of England and Wales.
The retailer said it now expects annual profit of between £55m and £65m, above the £52.6m analysts had forecast.
Halfords said the rest of the upgrade came from “continued momentum” in its core business, as it pushes ahead with a turnaround plan under chief executive Henry Birch.
Nvidia shares are now up 6.4% in pre-market trading, ahead of the Wall Street open later today.
Major supplier Micron Technology is 4.3% ahead in pre-market trading.
“Nvidia delivered a beat-and-raise quarter, but the real positive was the earnings call,” said Ben Barringer, head of technology research at Quilter Cheviot.
Investors came into the results with a laundry list of concerns around competition, the durability of AI spending, memory costs, margins, financing arrangements, open-source models and China. Management did a good job of systematically addressing each one.
The headline numbers were strong, with guidance implying around 70% revenue growth despite demand running closer to 100% growth and remaining constrained by supply.
On competition, Nvidia pointed to AWS as a customer, reinforcing its position even as hyperscalers develop their own silicon. While concerns about competition are unlikely to disappear, management made a convincing case that its ecosystem continues to provide a significant advantage.
Durability was another key question investors wanted answered and management’s response was robust. Alongside 70% growth guidance, Nvidia highlighted roughly $2 trillion of backlog, suggesting demand remains exceptionally strong.
Gross margins were probably the main negative. Nvidia reported margins of 75% but guided to 74%, citing rising memory prices. Management suggested margins could trough at around 71% before recovering as pricing adjusts. While worth monitoring, investors appeared comfortable with that explanation given the scale of demand.
Financing has also been flagged as a risk by some investors. Nvidia emphasised that it is not making loans to customers but creating financing platforms, which it views as vital to address this unique AI opportunity. Whether that becomes a meaningful business remains to be seen, but management sought to dispel credit risks being taken on.
Open-source AI was another area management addressed. Nvidia’s view is that open and closed models will coexist, leaving the company well positioned regardless of how the market develops.
But China remains one of the bigger unresolved issues, with little contribution from the region reflected in the current numbers.
Barringer concluded:
Overall, this was a strong quarter, but more importantly a strong call. Investors arrived with a long list of worries and management provided reassuring answers to most of them. The stock was initially flat after the results but rose around 5% following the call, suggesting that it was the commentary and strong guidance , rather than just the headline numbers, that ultimately convinced the market.
So, what is driving these massive revenues at Nvidia? asks Kathleen Brooks, research director at the investment platform XTB.
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Firstly, there has been an explosion in its customer base. Nvidia doesn’t publish customer numbers with its earnings report, but Jensen Huang said that last year one lab was driving the AI buildout, now there are multiple lab buildouts at once. Huang called it a golden age for AI, in the US and around the world. A broader customer base will keep revenue growth buoyant, it also means that Nvidia is less reliant on hyperscaler capex spend to continue to grow its own revenues.
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It’s not just the hyperscalers who want data centres, revenue from other parts of the market is now starting to pick up steam. Nvidia Cloud customers, along with industrial and enterprise clients now make up $40.3bn of revenue, up more than 100% in a year. The hyperscalers generated $48.7bn. Another reason why the stock price is rallying is because other parts of the market are quickly catching up to the hyperscalers.
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There has been a lot of concern about Nvidia’s equity investments in other AI companies, however, so far, they are paying off. Net income for last quarter included a $7.8bn gain in equity investments, which include Intel and SpaceX.
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While some are worried about a circular financing model that could leave Nvidia exposed if the investments turn sour, Nvidia’s supporters argue what else is a cash-generating machine like Nvidia supposed to do with its money? The company reported data centre sales of $92bn last quarter, and makes 92% of its revenues through its data centre and chip sales unit.
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When your bread and butter business is performing at this level, Nvidia has plenty of money to invest to broaden the global AI ecosystem, and there could even be upside if money generated through these investments feed back into Nvidia’s sales.
Analysts said Nvidia’s results are a shot in the arm for the AI trade. Brooks added:
With revenues this big, and demand for its products getting bigger every month, it will be a brave trader who will bet against Nvidia in the aftermath of this report. For now, the company has proven that criticism of its investment and financing model for AI is overblown, and today’s results could give the whole AI trade, and the US stock market, a shot in the arm, after a volatile few months for the tech trade.
These results are good news for Nvidia’s suppliers after the company said that it would double its supply commitments to $279bn, primarily related to memory costs. Nvidia’s largest memory suppliers include SK Hynix, Samsung and Micron.
More on Shein. The company, which sells £5 dresses and £11-£15 jeans, is set to price its initial public offering (IPO) at HK$48.56 a share, near the midpoint of its HK$47.60 to HK$49.50 range, Reuters reported.
The IPO will value the company at about a quarter of its nearly $100bn peak in 2022, and well below the $66bn it was valued at in a 2023 fundraising round.
Shein, which is headquartered in Singapore and was founded in China, launched its Hong Kong IPO on Monday. It is due to announce the final IPO price next Monday, with trading expected to begin the following day.
It is one of the longest-awaited initial public offerings (IPO) of recent years, after plans to list in New York were blocked by regulators over forced labour concerns. Shein then considered a £50bn float in London, but faced similar questions about its supply chain from campaigners, MPs and investors.
Cornerstone investors, led by existing shareholders Boyu Capital, Tiger Global and General Atlantic, have subscribed for $383m of shares, its prospectus showed. Tencent , Greenwoods, Taikang Life and UBS Asset Management will also buy shares.
Shein has said it will use 80% of the proceeds to improve its technology and expand its brand and global reach. It has also agreed to pay up to $3.5bn in cash to certain investors who bought special shares in earlier private funding rounds.
The retailer is grappling with slower revenue growth, weaker earnings and shrinking profit margins.
Introduction: Asian technology shares ride high on AI optimism after Nvidia’s ‘stunning’ results
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of the global economy, the financial markets, the eurozone and business.
Asian technology shares rose after bumper results from the US chipmaker Nvidia last night.
There was a sigh of relief after AI bellwether Nvidia reported a doubling in quarterly revenue to nearly $100bn and forecast third-quarter revenue above Wall Street forecasts. The chipmaker, the most valuable company in the world with a $5tn market cap, made revenues of $96bn in the second quarter which is set to rise to $108bn in the third.
Jensen Huang, the California company’s founder and chief executive, jubilantly declared that demand is accelerating as the AI industry had reached a “golden age”.
The results showed no signs of slowing demand for chips and revived confidence in the AI trade after a recent sell-off in tech shares on Wall Street and Asia, leading to a massive drop in the South Korean stock market in July.
Kathleen Brooks, research director at XTB, described the figures as “nothing short of stunning”.
Nvidia shares rose 4.7% in post-market trading to $219.53 and if the rally continues into Thursday, as Brooks expects, it could break through the $220 barrier, heading towards the $235 highs seen in May.
Susannah Streeter, chief investment strategist at the Wealth Club, said:
The AI juggernaut is rumbling on with Nvidia smashing through expectations, amid voracious demand for the tech backbone of the AI revolution. The results solidified high expectations for the company’s mega revenues going forward, and shares firmed up, leaving behind the post-results wobbles seen after previous updates. Given the might of Nvidia, which carries the largest weight of any company in the S&P 500, the results are closely watched as a gauge of sentiment towards AI adoption, and the prospects for the index, which so many portfolios track.
Demand for its Blackwell chips has been particularly significant, showing that customers are continuing to spend heavily on Nvidia’s newest generation of AI accelerators rather than simply filling existing capacity. With demand still running ahead of supply, Blackwell is helping to power the next leg of the AI infrastructure build-out.
However, once the initial excitement settles, questions are likely to resurface about the durability of this boom in revenues. It’s becoming less about whether Nvidia can keep climbing the AI mountain, and more about how long it can sustain this extraordinary pace of ascent and whether the vast sums being poured into AI infrastructure will ultimately deliver the returns needed to justify the colossal investment.
South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.3%, with shares in the memory chipmaker Samsung Electronics up 3%.
The Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges climbed 0.95% and 1.37% respectively while the Singapore market added 0.4% and Taiwan was 0.3% ahead. However, other major Asian markets were in the red, with Japan’s Nikkei edging 0.2% lower and the Australian exchange falling nearly 1%.
In Hong Kong, the online fashion retailer Shein is set to price its stock market flotation at $26.5bn, raising $1.7bn, Reuters reported, citing two sources.
In the US, the Jackson Hole economic policy symposium kicks off today, and markets are on tenterhooks for a keynote speech from US Federal Reserve chair Kevin Warsh on Friday.
The Agenda
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Jackson Hole Economic Policy Symposium begins in the US
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1.30pm BST: US Initial jobless claims for week to 22 August
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1.30pm BST: US trade in goods for July