Thailand Seeks Neutral Venue for Border Talks With Cambodia
Bangkok has proposed shifting the Aug. 4 General Border Committee meeting, agreed by the leaders of the two countries, to a city in Malaysia. The request was made by Thailand's Acting Defense Minister Nattaphon Narkphanit, in a letter dated July 31, to his Cambodian counterpart, citing 'the sensitive nature of the situation.'
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CNN
25 minutes ago
- CNN
Trump's historic new tariffs are now in effect. Here's what you need to know
President Donald Trump just enacted a new wave of tariffs on dozens of America's trading partners, marking a substantial escalation in ongoing trade tensions that could constitute the biggest change to the global economy in nearly a century. The historic new trade policy follows months of false starts to Trump's so-called 'reciprocal' tariff rollout and countless bilateral trade negotiations, a handful of which resulted in agreements that fended off even higher tariffs. Trump and his economic advisers have celebrated the considerably higher tariffs that have already gone into effect, correctly noting that they have raised more than $100 billion in tax revenue without leading to catastrophic inflation or a recession, as some economists had feared. The president is moving forward with new, significantly more aggressive tariffs that economists fear could exacerbate budding economic problems, including rising inflation and slowing job growth, that are just now becoming more apparent. Here's what to know about the tariffs: Before Thursday, virtually every country's goods were subject to a minimum 10% tariff. Now rates vary substantially from country to country. The highest rates imposed are on goods from Brazil (50%), Laos (40%), Myanmar (40%), Switzerland (39%), Iraq (35%) and Serbia (35%). An additional 21 countries also face levies greater than 15%. That includes several countries the US relies heavily on for a variety of goods, such as Vietnam (20%), India (25%), Taiwan (20%) and Thailand (19%). Goods from India could also be subject to an additional 25% tariff stacked on top of that because of an executive order Trump signed Wednesday that seeks to penalize India for purchasing oil from Russia. That second tariff is slated to take effect on August 27. Thirty-nine countries' goods, as well as members of the European Union, are subject to 15% tariffs, according to a list the White House published last week. Besides Canada and Mexico, all other countries the US imports goods from will continue to face a minimum 10% tariff, albeit with a few exemptions. Goods from Mexico and Canada are exempt from tariffs if they're compliant with the US-Mexico-Canada free-trade agreement. If not, goods from Mexico are subject to 25% tariffs, while goods from Canada are subject to 35% tariffs, up from 25% previously. In most cases, they're not exactly trade deals, per se, but rather rough sketches of ones that could take months, or even years, to finalize — assuming they don't fall apart. Over the past five months, Trump announced eight trade agreements. Of those, only two — with the United Kingdom and China — have been formalized. The agreement with China, which significantly lowered tariff rates both countries imposed on one another's goods, expires on August 12. If both countries fail to act, rates could spike again. Most agreements Trump announced involve trading partners committing to purchasing more American products, like oil, cars, Boeing airplanes, defense equipment and agricultural goods. They also involve hundreds of billions of dollars worth of investments in American businesses. But it's unclear if the United States and other trading partners involved in agreements are on the same page about many of the proposed terms. For instance, Japan's Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and a lead Japanese trade negotiator, Ryosei Akazawa, both recently said many key details are still being worked out and are telling a vastly different story from Trump, who earlier this week said the country agreed to buy Ford F-150s. Yes, plenty. One notable exemption is smartphones, which aren't subject to any of the new rates. Additionally, goods for which Trump imposed separate sectoral tariffs or ordered investigations that could result in higher rates won't be stacked on top of country-specific 'reciprocal' tariffs. For the time being, that means pharmaceuticals, for instance, could be imported from countries duty-free. However, Trump is warning they could soon face significantly higher rates. The EU sought to preempt those tariffs by negotiating a 15% tax on pharma exports to the US as part of the agreement announced with Trump. Other countries involved in trade agreements similarly are getting more favorable rates on certain sectoral tariffs. There's also a partial exemption for certain goods manufactured abroad where at least 20% of their value comes from American materials and labor. Technically they're already in effect, but there's a caveat. The executive order Trump signed last week essentially states that most goods that were loaded on ships and in transit to the US before 12:01 am on Thursday will face whatever the prior tariff rates were until October 5. In addition to pharma tariffs, Trump has threatened to impose across-the-board tariffs on semiconductors and lumber. At an Oval Office event on Wednesday, for example, Trump said he would soon place a 100% tariff on chips and semiconductors, although he didn't give a timeline. And while the tariffs Trump just enacted could ultimately be rendered illegal, pending an ongoing court challenge, the president has plenty of levers he can pull to keep pushing his agenda for higher tariffs.
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
How Palantir—a company too small to make the Fortune 500—became one of the world's 25 most valuable companies
Alex Karp, the frizzy-haired CEO of defense software company Palantir, has become somewhat of a pro at deflecting criticism. As he sat for an interview in April at the tech policy-focused Hill and Valley Forum in Washington D.C. and a heckler started shouting at him from the balcony, Karp retorted rather calmly, telling the audience he believed it was her right to express her views. But this week—after Palantir reported blockbuster earnings on Monday—Karp took a moment to bask in his company's meteoric rise and take a jab at his critics. Palantir, based in Denver, surpassed $1 billion in quarterly revenue for the first time this week, posting growth figures that blew past analyst estimates. Palantir's stock soared to more than $160 a share, marking a 555% increase from this time last year. By market close on Tuesday, Palantir's market cap had hit nearly $409 billion, making it the 23rd most valuable company in the world, just behind Johnson & Johnson, a company with more than 23 times Palantir's revenue and more than 35x the number of employees. As he started speaking on Monday's earnings call, Karp, who has a PhD in neoclassical social theory, was absolutely delighted—and true to form, a bit snarky, too. 'Well, as usual, I've been cautioned to be a little modest about our bombastic numbers, but honestly, there's no authentic way to be anything but have enormous pride and gratefulness about these extraordinary numbers,' Karp said. As he wrapped up the call, he gave a quippy message to retail investors about the analysts that have 'been wrong about every quarter.' 'Maybe stop talking to all the haters—they're suffering,' he said. Palantir, a software company co-founded by Peter Thiel, has many 'haters,' as Karp puts it. As a tech company that got its start selling to the U.S. military during the War on Terror, Palantir has been fully embedded in some of the most polarizing political debates of modern geopolitics. Particularly now, Palantir has stirred criticism over its software being used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, as well as the Israeli military. On the financial side, there's a different kind of critic: those who question how such a relatively small company—one whose revenue and profits are so small in comparison to peers that it doesn't even qualify for the Fortune 500 list—could reasonably become one of the most valuable companies in the world. For Palantir, it has been a slow, albeit volatile, climb to where it is now—marked by contentious legal battles, noisy protests and picket lines, and an eccentric leadership team and employee base who sometimes endearingly refer to one another as 'hobbits,' in credit to the company's Lord of the Rings nomenclature (Palantir is in reference to the seeing stones created by Elves that allow people to see far away or communicate with others). And, more recently, in the last two years, Palantir has ridden the generative AI wave. 'They've got their feet under them—they've got their sales cycle down a little bit more. They're just making things really, really sticky for large multinational corporations,' says Evan Loomis, a venture capitalist who is close friends with Palantir cofounder Joe Lonsdale and whose construction technology startup, ICON, uses Palantir's software platform Foundry. While the company is currently one of the best-performing stocks in the S&P 500, Palantir's stock has also been known to be incredibly volatile, and sometimes dramatically influenced by retail investor activity. Palantir is undoubtedly having a moment—but will it last? 'Two times more expensive' There are a host of near-term data points analysts look at: sales, cash flow, profit, customer retention. If you look at most of these near-term fundamentals, Palantir is trading at a premium. 'They are trading at least two times more expensive on the traditional metrics,' says Mariana Pérez Mora, an equity analyst at Bank of America Securities, who has been following the company since 2022. But, as we speak, Pérez Mora reminds me about another important, longer-term metric for SaaS companies that Karp has repeatedly reminded onlookers to pay close attention to. That metric is called the 'Rule of Forty.' The Rule of Forty figure is calculated by adding the year-over-year revenue growth rate and adjusted operating margin. If those percentages are collectively higher than 40%, you have sustainable growth. If you look at Palantir's last quarter, Pérez Mora points out, the rule of 40 was 94%. 'That is the type of growth they are having. And the reality is that growth is accelerating, and that accelerating growth is not at the expense of profitability. And that is pretty unique,' she says, adding: 'Palantir is trading as the company that they are growing into, and this is why it's more expensive.' There are a few key contributors to these numbers. For one, new government contracts. Palantir has been working with the government since the beginning—its first customer being the CIA—and government contracts still make up a majority of its business. At the end of July, Palantir signed a 10-year contract worth up to $10 billion with the U.S. Army. It was one of the largest software contracts the Department of Defense has ever signed and, by far, Palantir's largest contract to-date. And, ironically, it is the same customer Palantir sued (successfully) almost 10 years ago, accusing the department of unlawfully excluding companies like Palantir from its procurement process. There could be more contracts of this scale on the table, too. The Fostering Reform and Government Efficiency Act, or FoRGED Act, currently on the table would reshape the Department of Defense's procurement process for private contracts, eliminating hundreds of statutes and making it easier for tech companies like Palantir to sell to the government. The legislation, which Palantir has publicly endorsed and which its executives have pushed for in public hearings, would likely cut into the advantage that some of the industry incumbents like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, RTX, and Northrop Grumman have gained over the years. The Department of Defense has been making trims to its budget since Trump named Pete Hegseth to the top role. But Palantir is seemingly benefitting from that, too. Only a couple months after the Department of Defense said it had cut more than $5.1 billion in contracts to consulting agencies, including Accenture and Deloitte, both companies announced new strategic partnerships with Palantir to collectively deliver solutions to government clients. But the lion share of growth at Palantir over the last year is coming from a newer segment of customers—the commercial side of the business. Revenue for the commercial side rose 93% year-over-year this past quarter. And nearly all of those contracts stem from the generative artificial intelligence platform it released in 2023, called 'AIP' (which stands for the ever-original 'artificial intelligence platform'). Perez Mora says that while a lot of companies are building and offering large language models, Palantir has found a way to help companies make use of them—and drive real results for their businesses. On this last earnings call, Karp said that Citibank was onboarding its customers and running the relevant know-your-customer and security checks in seconds, down from nine days. He said that residential mortgage enterprise Fannie Mae is uncovering mortgage fraud in seconds, versus two months. And he said that Lear Corporation is using Palantir's platform to manage tariff exposure. Investors seem to have taken note, as there is a direct correlation between the launch of AIP in 2023 and the steady upward trajectory Palantir's stock has experienced since. But generative AI is still new—and many companies and industries haven't fully explored or realized just what jobs AI will be able to replace or make more efficient. Palantir itself doesn't seem to have it sorted out either. CEO Karp said in an interview on CNBC this week that he thinks Palantir could keep growing revenue while reducing headcount by 500 jobs to about 3,600 people. But if you look at Palantir's headcount, it has been doing the opposite: adding about 200 people between 2023 and 2024, not cutting roles. For all that companies like Alphabet or Salesforce are boasting of the efficiencies they are adding within their ranks by using AI, those same companies have seen their workforces grow. One of Silicon Valley's most controversial companies Palantir's valuation may be climbing to new heights, but the company is as controversial as ever. They've been the target of sit-ins, picketings, and other protests that have pulled in hundreds of people in New York City, Palo Alto, Denver, Seattle, and Los Angeles, condemning Palantir's contract with the ICE (Palantir has been running a six-month pilot contract 'centered on enforcement prioritization and immigration lifecycle management,' the company says.) Palantir has a partnership with the Israeli Defense Forces for 'war-related missions,' which has also come under fire. A report submitted to the UN Human Rights Council in June that singled out companies aiding Israel in the war in Gaza, including Lockheed Martin, said there was 'reasonable grounds to believe' Palantir was providing automatic predictive policing technology and core defense infrastructure to Israel. A Palantir spokeswoman said the company 'does not provide the technology for Israel to conduct missile strikes or targeting operations in Gaza and has no involvement in the Lavendar or Gospel systems. These targeting capabilities are entirely independent of and predate our partnership with Israel's Ministry of Defense.' Karp addressed some of the criticism Palantir has received over the years on the last earnings call. 'Palantir gets attacked just because we help make this country even better, because we support the values, because we defend it,' he said. Earlier this year, Karp and Palantir's head of corporate affairs, Nicholas Zamiska, published The Technological Republic, which criticizes Silicon Valley for spending its time on consumer apps and dodging working with the government and playing a role in defending freedoms and democracy. But there has also been some notable pushback even from former employees in the last couple years. In May, more than a dozen former Palantir employees signed an open letter to the tech community, alleging that Palantir had violated principles core to the company due to its work with the Trump Administration. 'Palantir prides itself on [a] culture of fierce internal dialogue and even disagreement on difficult issues related to our work,' a Palantir spokeswoman said. 'The small number of former Palantir employees—13 of 4,000—raising concerns are certainly entitled to express their views.' Despite heightened criticism on the public stage, Silicon Valley has come to not only accept, but embrace defense tech since 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine. It's one of the hottest sectors around right now, with companies like drone startup Anduril garnering a $30.5 billion valuation in the private markets. Indeed, tech companies used to shy away from defense contracts. But under the Trump Administration, there's been a tidal shift. Meta teamed up with Anduril to start working on helmet and headset projects for the U.S. military. Numerous LLM companies, including OpenAI, xAI, and Anthropic, started working with the Department of Defense on national security. Even Google, which famously stopped working with the government in 2018 after internal upheaval from its employees, has gotten into the military business. In some ways, Palantir—and SpaceX, too—have been a catalyst for the shift. Palantir had initially been rejected from top Silicon Valley venture capital firms when the founders tried to raise initial capital, as Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins both famously passed on the investment. Cofounder Thiel ended up putting in much of his own money and raising capital from former officials from President George W. Bush's administration as well as the CIA's venture capital firm In-Q-Tel. Now, with Thiel protegee J.D. Vance as Vice President of the United States, and a defense-tech-friendly White House in charge, the company has access to the inner circle at the highest levels of power. And Karp, who pens a 'letter to shareholders' that's published on Palantir's site in English, German, and French each quarter alongside the financial results, has a lot of thoughts to share. 'The United States is not, and should not be permitted to become, a soft compromise and amalgam of global values and tastes,' Karp wrote in his most recent letter, referencing a 1943 work by C.S. Lewis which describes 'men without chests.' 'Such men without chests,' Karp says, 'promise to shepherd us forward yet lack much substance and content, even a flicker of an animating worldview or belief structure, other than their own self-preservation and advancement.' For now, at least, Karp's worldview and Palantir's business seem to be defying the critics, the haters, and the chestless. This story was originally featured on
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Oktaha residents to decide on sales tax proposal
Oktaha Mayor June Hall said the upcoming sales tax election is key to advancing the town. 'This is a critical step for Oktaha,' Hall said. 'We work on a shoestring budget. There's been no stores here in Oktaha in just about 30 years.' The proposed sales tax is 4%. Early voting is Thursday and Friday at the Muskogee County Election Board office from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. while the general election is Tuesday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Oktaha Volunteer Fire Department. Muskogee County District 1 Commissioner Ken Doke campaigned in 2014 on economic development for his district and for the county. '[Oktaha] hasn't had any businesses there that could generate sales tax, so there was never a need for one,' Doke said. 'One of the ideas I shared was bringing in a Dollar General — not just for convenience, but for the long-term potential it could bring to the community.' Doke also said the result of the sales tax election is a decision for the people of Oktaha. 'If the annexation and sales tax pass, they will pick up the Dollar Store and the Convenient Store,' he said. 'They could then begin collecting sales tax. If it doesn't pass, they will collect nothing.' Hall said the vote can lead to improvements and commerce. 'The sales tax is important to Oktaha so we can run the town,' Hall said. 'The sales tax was proposed months ago in one of our meetings. We're trying to improve Oktaha the best we can.' Doke also explained on a Facebook post how important he thinks the vote is to the town. 'I hope people realize what's truly at stake — not just a store, but a once-in-a-generation opportunity to shape Oktaha's future on its own terms,' he said. 'Whatever the outcome, we'll keep working to bring opportunities like this to communities across Muskogee County.' Solve the daily Crossword
