Honda Motor first-quarter profit halves as U.S. auto tariffs bite
Here are Honda's results compared with mean estimates from LSEG:
In the first quarter of its fiscal year, which ends on June 30, 2026, Honda's revenue came in at 5.34 trillion yen, beating mean estimates from LSEG.
Operating profit fell about 50% to 244.17 billion yen, missing LSEG mean estimates of 323.48 billion yen.
The earnings come after Japanese automobile makers began cutting prices on vehicle shipments to the U.S. in response to American President Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on imported vehicles, which came into effect on April 3.
Trump last month announced a new trade deal with Japan that is said to include a lower tariff rate of 15% on Japan-made vehicle imports to the U.S. However, the timeframe for the change to take effect was not clarified.
In June, the value of Tokyo's car exports to the U.S. fell 25.3% year over year, even though car export volumes to the U.S. rose by 4.6% in the same period, according to data from Japan's trade ministry.
Auto exports to the U.S. are a cornerstone of Japan's economy, making up 28.3% of all shipments in 2024, according to customs data.
Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba said Monday he would not hesitate to speak with President Donald Trump to ensure the cut to U.S. automobile tariffs is implemented soon.
The country's chief trade negotiator Ryosei Akazawa left for Washington on Tuesday, seeking to press Trump to sign an executive order that would confirm the exact date for the auto tariffs to be lowered.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Associated Press
a few seconds ago
- Associated Press
What to know as Trump's immigration crackdown strips tuition breaks from thousands of students
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Tens of thousands of U.S. college students without legal resident status are losing access to in-state tuition prices as part of President Donald Trump's crackdown on immigration. The Justice Department has been suing states to end tuition breaks for students without legal residency, starting with Texas in June. It has also filed lawsuits in Kentucky, Minnesota and, most recently, Oklahoma. Last year, Florida ended its tuition break for students living there illegally, 'Federal law prohibits aliens not lawfully present in the United States from getting in-state tuition benefits that are denied to out-of-state U.S. citizens,' the Justice Department argued in a lawsuit this month in Oklahoma. 'There are no exceptions.' The tuition breaks once enjoyed wide bipartisan support but have increasingly come under criticism from Republicans in recent years. Here's what to know about the tuition breaks: Texas' program was blocked firstTexas' tuition policy was initially passed with sweeping bipartisan majorities in the Legislature and signed into law by then-Gov. Rick Perry, a Republican, as a way to open access to higher education for students without legal residency already living in the state. Supporters then and now say it boosted the state's economy by creating a better-educated and better-prepared workforce. The law allowed students without legal resident status to qualify for in-state tuition if they had lived in Texas for three years before graduating from high school and for a year before enrolling in college. They also had to sign an affidavit promising to apply for legal resident status as soon as possible. Texas now has about 57,000 qualifying students enrolled in its public universities and colleges, according to the Presidents' Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, a nonpartisan nonprofit group of university leaders focused on immigration policy. The state has about 690,000 students overall at its public universities. The difference in tuition rates is substantial. For example, at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, a 34,000-student campus along the border with Mexico, a state resident will pay about $10,000 in basic tuition for a minimum full-time class schedule in the upcoming school year. A nonresident student will pay $19,000. Political pushback and a swift end Texas' law stood mostly unchallenged for years, but it came under fire as debates over illegal immigration intensified. In the 2012 Republican presidential primary, Perry apologized after saying critics of the law 'did not have a heart.' The law withstood several repeal efforts in the Republican-dominated Legislature. During the legislative session that ended June 2, a repeal bill did not even get a vote. But the ax fell quickly. After the Trump administration filed a lawsuit calling the law unconstitutional, state Attorney General Ken Paxton, a key Trump ally, chose not to defend the law in court and instead filed a motion agreeing that it should not be enforced. In Oklahoma, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, also a Republican, filed a similar motion. 'Rewarding foreign nationals who are in our country illegally with lower tuition costs that are not made available to out-of-state American citizens is not only wrong — it is discriminatory and unlawful,' Drummond said in a statement. Campuses nationwide feel the impact At least 21 states and the University of Michigan system have laws or policies allowing tuition breaks for the immigrant students, according to the National Immigration Law Center, which favors them. Those states include Democratic-leaning ones such as California and New York, but also GOP-leaning ones such as Kansas and Nebraska. According to the center, at least 16 states allow the immigrant students to receive scholarships or other aid to go to college. Immigration lawyers and education advocates said they are assessing whether there are legal avenues to challenge the rulings.
Forbes
a few seconds ago
- Forbes
DeepSeek: A Paradigm Shift, What It Means For Humanity
The whale that is DeepSeek was invisible prior to Jan 20th 2025. Then the Blue Whale breaches to the whole world's sight on Jan 20th. That body slam sent shockwaves around the world. The release of DeepSeek-R1 immediately cratered the market cap of several hardware and software companies which were buoyed by what investors thought was American exceptionalism. Withholding the latest chips and AI Intellectual Property from China was thought to be the strategy to follow. Except it was wrong. Such is the stuff that leapfrogging is made of. Especially for manufacturing and design powerhouse such as China. Ironically, the latest models from DeepSeek are free to use. They even run it on their servers for free. Development of general purpose large language models through scaling of parameters and training data led to many breakthroughs. The release of ChatGPT-3.5 and 4.0 in 2022-23 unleashed the general purpose potential of AI to the general public. This approach also increased costs tremendously as compute and data demands spurred bigger and better processors. In late 2023 and 2024 and even now, the construction of power hungry data centers were thought to be the only way to improve the performance of the models. Limiting access to computing and the latest chips was thought to restrain China as a source of these powerful models. With DeepSeek that paradigm was shifted. Companies like Nvidia whose stock was heavily affected by the announcement have since recovered and thrived. The lessons were lost on global markets. The worst may yet to come as the companies buoyed by the rising of AI and its use are brought down to earth by a combination of new methods and the lessening of compute needed to do training as well as inference. Sunk costs and the costs of switching with their own powerful economic adherents prevent a longer term view and lock the American AI in their paths. Success breeds complacency and adherence to the model that produced success. In AI, a rapidly developing field, getting stuck on algorithms, process and practice is deadly. DeepSeek showed that just piling on computing and data does not make for exponential progress. This is a lesson from many fields, that is often ignored with an overused but wrong dictum 'This time it is different.' Innovation follows familiar patterns; slowly then rapidly. Efficiency The costs of training and running DeepSeek are much lower than for other models. The ratio in a recent presentation showed $6M for DeepSeek/ versus $600M for Llama (the open source model from Meta). One hundredth the cost. The costs for other models, including ChatGPT, are even more. The cost savings are a result of implementing DeepSeek's own discoveries in reinforcement learning and training using distillation. Further, the model is very efficient in generating Chinese language. As of three months ago, a large number of Chinese companies had joined the AI revolution by subscribing to DeepSeek. As the national champion, the government industrial policy supports DeepSeek. RL as a training method was invented in the University of Amherst. The recipients of the 2024 ACM Turing award, Andrew Barto and Richard Sutton were the inventors of the classic reinforcement learning techniques. For LLMs and other large models, such an approach falls under supervised learning. The model is refined by feedback, classically from humans, called RLHF (Reinforcement Learning with Human Feedback). This is called supervised fine- tuning. Humans are the supervisors. The paper released by the creators of DeepSeek R1 goes into detail on the way that they modified RL. Anything that involves humans in the loop at scale requires a lot of money. Removing the human in the loop makes training cheaper. A version of the model is used to fine-tune the other. In other words, one model functions as the supervisor and the other is trained. The arrival of new companies with models such as MiniMax-M1 epitomizes this shift even more. Such techniques will overtake models which are created using conventional scaling. DeepSeek-R1 was effective through its evolution utilizing multiple strategies. A combination of novel methods based on existing techniques made the training and inference efficient in time and resources. More details can be found in this article. In short, all aspects of the creation and running of large language models were changed, enhanced or reworked for cost and time efficiency. MiniMax-M1 MiniMax-M1 claims to have chopped the cost of DeepSeek-R1 training by 90%. They trained their model for a cost of $500K. Contrast this to the $6M cost for DeepSeek-R1 and $600M for LLaMa. There have been doubts cast on the numbers publicized by both DeepSeek and MiniMax. Efficiencies have been through further refining RL with what is called lightning attention. This is mostly for deterministic problems such as mathematical and logical reasoning and long context problems such as coding. Minimax is also available through HuggingFace the open source AI host. Privacy There is concern that DeepSeek is harvesting private data for its own use. This phenomenon is rife in the world of AI and social media in general. What makes the sharing of private data with DeepSeek or other private companies is the fact that they will be used to refine the models. In the case of DeepSeek or other China based companies, there is a fear of data reaching the Chinese government. Private AI companies, even those in the United States do the same, except they will share that data with the US government if they are forced by law. At this juncture, such a scenario is more disquieting. The fourth amendment will fall by the wayside, if the government can search not only our persons and our homes, but our minds without a warrant. To read more about the risks of DeepSeek, read this analysis from Hidden Layer. Since Hidden Layer's business model is based on these kinds of analysis, it is best to look closely at the analysis and compare with their work on other open models. Open Source AI Models Open Source International (OSI) has a definition of Open Source AI. It is 1.0 right now, subject to revision. Like the Open Source definition for software, it allows users to use, observe, modify and distribute without any restrictions. AI models depend a lot on their training data. AI use involves inference, consuming resources. The expenditure on training is separate from the expense of inference. In the classic definition of open source software the source code is available to any user to use, observe, modify and distribute. In a strict interpretation of AI open-source, the source code should include data used to train the model. However this may not be practical, nor is it part of the OSI definition of Open Source AI. This is drastically different from the OSI guidance for open source software. The other difference is the observability of the model weights and hyperparameters. During the learning phase model weights are refined. Model weights embody the model in its current form, crystallizing all the training that the model has undergone. Hyperparameters control the initial configuration of the learning setup. In an open model, model weights and model parameters are meant to be open. Open Source AI models can be called open weights models. Many models from China are open weights models, including Qwen (From AliBababa). This competition has also forced OpenAI to release an open weight model. This is the gpt-oss base model with two variants. The Future We have not delved into the technology behind the creation of multi-modal prompts and multi-modal generation. By multi-modal, we mean not only text, but images, audio as well as video. MiniMax as well as DeepSeek have these capabilities. It is clear that limiting access to hardware and know-how cannot hold true innovation back. Such constraints also make for multiple paradigm shifts, making AI cheaper to develop with lower hardware and power resources, creating democratized and decentralized future where we could fine-tune and run models on commodity hardware. These developments give us hope that we will be able to control and bend these capabilities to help humanity rather than harm ourselves.
New York Times
a few seconds ago
- New York Times
Thursday Briefing: Trump Threatens to Double India's Tariffs
Trump ratcheted up tariffs on India to 50 percent President Trump signed an order yesterday that would double tariffs on India to 50 percent as punishment for the country's purchase of Russian oil. The new 25 percent tariff, which will be added to the 25 percent tariff Trump announced last week, will take effect on Aug. 27 if India doesn't stop buying Russian oil. Trump also threatened to impose similar penalties on other countries that buy Russian energy, as a way to pressure the Kremlin into ending the war with Ukraine. India's foreign ministry called the move 'extremely unfortunate' and reiterated that it was importing oil from Russia to meet the energy needs of its 1.4 billion people. India is the second-largest importer of Russian oil after China; Turkey is another major oil customer. Here's what to know about India's oil trade with Russia. Analysis: Trump had been expected to bolster trade with India as a counterweight to China. Now, Trump has all but declared economic war against India, writes Alex Travelli, who covers the Indian economy. Trump intends to meet with Zelensky and Putin Trump told European leaders during a call yesterday that he intends to sit down with President Vladimir Putin of Russia as soon as next week. He then aims to meet with both Putin and the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, according to two people familiar with Trump's plan. It was not immediately clear whether Putin or Zelensky had agreed to the joint meeting. Zelensky said in a statement that he had a conversation with Trump and that he and Europe's leaders agreed that the war in Ukraine 'must end,' but that it must be 'an honest end.' Trump's announcement came after his envoy, Steve Witkoff, met with Putin. Russian news agencies reported that the talks in the Kremlin lasted about three hours. Trump has been stymied for months in his efforts to negotiate a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine after more than three years of war. Related: Thousands of Ukrainians now struggle with the trauma of severe facial injuries, but the country's doctors have made strides with 3-D printing in facial reconstruction. China turns to A.I. in information warfare The Chinese government is using companies with expertise in artificial intelligence to monitor and manipulate public opinion in Hong Kong and Taiwan, according to current and former U.S. officials and documents. Internal documents from the Chinese company GoLaxy show how Beijing had undertaken influence campaigns in Hong Kong and Taiwan, and collected data on members of the U.S. Congress and other influential Americans. Experts said that using A.I. in this way could result in far more sophisticated influence operations than those in the past. GoLaxy denied that it had done any work related to Hong Kong or other elections and said its products were mainly based on open-source data, and did not specifically target U.S. officials. After being contacted by The Times, GoLaxy began altering its website, removing references to its national security work on behalf of the Chinese government. Israel: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu plans to convene his security cabinet today to discuss expanding Israel's military campaign into the rest of Gaza. Pakistan: A video of an honor killing has gone viral, forcing the authorities to confront gender violence. Sudan: The Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group is battling for gains in the Kordofan region after being driven out of central Khartoum. Syria: A cease-fire has taken hold in Sweida after a wave of violence between the Bedouins and Druse, but the atmosphere remains tense. China: As Beijing pushes consumer lending, millions of borrowers, especially the young, are falling into debt spirals, our columnist writes. U.S.: An Army sergeant using a personal handgun opened fire at an Army base in Georgia, wounding five soldiers. Ghana: The ministers of defense and the environment died in a military helicopter crash, which killed all eight people on board. Apple: Trump planned to announce that the tech company was pledging $100 billion in additional investment in the U.S. Italy: After 50 years of proposals, the island of Sicily will be linked to the mainland of Italy by bridge. Royals: A British independent watchdog cleared Prince Harry of accusations of bullying, harassment and sexism at a charity he co-founded. Soccer: Manchester United is spending big on transfers against a backdrop of tightening finances. Cycling: The superstar cyclist Remco Evenepoel announced he would switch teams for the 2026 season. Formula One: How will McLaren handle having two drivers battling for the world championship? Barry James, a paleontologist, built a business in Pennsylvania with his wife, April, painstakingly assembling the skeletons of T. rexes and sauropods, which can sell for tens of millions of dollars. They were reconstructing a triceratops when April died last year, and James, bereaved, stopped working. But he has started again, and has one heartfelt request for whoever buys the triceratops: that they call it April. Lives lived: Stella Rimington, the first woman to lead Britain's MI5 intelligence agency, died at 90. Revolutionary: The cultural impact of 'Hamilton' has reached far beyond Broadway in the decade since the musical opened. Hero or war criminal: The statue of a general accused of torture during Algeria's war for independence is dividing his French hometown. World renowned: Some of London's blockbuster Indian restaurants are coming to the U.S. Home on the range: Buy a Wyoming ranch four times the size of New York City for $79.5 million. A Pacifist nation not entirely at peace Hiroshima has a Peace Boulevard, a Peace Bell and a Peace Memorial Park. The city and the rest of Japan were rebuilt with pacifism at their core after the American atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. But 80 years after the world's only nuclear attacks, Japan is not entirely at peace. Ultranationalist politicians are pushing for a more militaristic Japan in a world cleaved by conflict, and many younger Japanese are in favor. Here's more on why public opinion is changing, and watch this video of my colleague Hannah Beech explaining the shift. Cook: This chile crisp fried rice is vegan and packed with protein. Read: The memoir 'Tart' celebrates, and mocks, the London restaurant world. Watch: These are the best movies and TV shows coming to Netflix. Listen: Check out this playlist of eight early rap songs. Travel: Here's how to make a work trip with family work. Play: Spelling Bee, the Mini Crossword, Wordle and Sudoku. Find all our games here. That's it for today. See you tomorrow. — Dan. We welcome your feedback. Send us your suggestions at briefing@
