China's Exports Accelerated in July Ahead of Tariff Truce Deadline
Outbound shipment rose 7.2% from a year earlier last month, accelerating from June's 5.8% increase, the General Administration of Customs said on Thursday. A Wall Street Journal survey of economists had forecast a 6.0% gain.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Jack Dorsey declares victory over China in Bitcoin mining chip race
Jack Dorsey declares victory over China in Bitcoin mining chip race originally appeared on TheStreet. Twitter co-founder and Block, Inc. (NYSE: XYZ) boss Jack Dorsey thinks his team has outdone China in Bitcoin mining chips. Bitcoin mining is the process of using high-end computers to solve cryptographic functions, validate BTC transactions, and add blocks to the network in return for BTC rewards. Dorsey's fintech venture Block has increasingly adopted Bitcoin over the years, and its unit Proto is dedicated to Bitcoin mining. Proto, aiming to decentralize the supply of Bitcoin mining hardware and the distribution of hash rate, is expected to launch a suite of mining chips on Aug. 14. An X user wondered if Dorsey's Proto has "out engineered" China on Bitcoin mining chips, as it would turn the industry upside down. Dorsey simply responded, "we have." On Aug. 13, Block made another major announcement that it will privately raise $1.5 billion for general corporate purposes. How does Trump's China tariff policy affect Bitcoin mining? While the U.S. is the leading Bitcoin mining country in terms of hash rate, it is China that takes the lead in manufacturing mining rig equipment. The world's three largest manufacturers of Bitcoin mining machines, namely Bitmain, Canaan, and MicroBT — all of Chinese origin — build over 90% of global mining rigs. Bitcoin miners, including those based in the U.S., are highly dependent on the mining hardware supply from China. But President Donald Trump's aggressive tariff policy targeted toward China has the U.S. mining industry concerned about its prospects. This is where domestic players like Block come like Block, which recently joined the S&P 500 list, can manufacture Bitcoin mining rigs in the U.S. Co-founder and chairman Dorsey even said during the Q1 2025 earnings call, 'We're building in the United States.' Block's efforts notwithstanding, it will take a few years for the complete onshoring of the Bitcoin mining manufacturing. U.S. manufacturers of mining rigs face the dual challenge of exceeding or at least meeting China's product quality and undercutting its manufacturing costs. The onshoring process could also potentially come to a pause if the U.S. and China reach a long-term consensus on the tariff policy which doesn't put a heavy tax burden on imports of Chinese mining chips. Jack Dorsey declares victory over China in Bitcoin mining chip race first appeared on TheStreet on Aug 13, 2025 This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Aug 13, 2025, where it first appeared. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
13 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Google Finds Workaround for Lobbying Rules That Omits Big Bosses
(Bloomberg) — It was the end of 2018, and Google's leaders were tired of being Number One. For the second year in a row, federal records showed the search giant had spent more than any other individual company on lobbying in Washington. Executives in Mountain View were sick of seeing that mentioned in the press. Sunseeking Germans Face Swiss Backlash Over Alpine Holiday Congestion The US-Canadian Road Safety Gap Is Getting Wider To Head Off Severe Storm Surges, Nova Scotia Invests in 'Living Shorelines' Five Years After Black Lives Matter, Brussels' Colonial Statues Remain For Homeless Cyclists, Bikes Bring an Escape From the Streets Then Google apparently found a workaround. A new analysis of federal lobbying data by the nonprofit Tech Transparency Project shows that Google and its parent company, Alphabet Inc. used an internal reorganization to exclude the value of lobbying by its senior executives from disclosures. The move helped keep Google off the top of the lobbying charts even as it maintained a robust network of advocates pushing its interests in the capital, during federal challenges to its dominance in search and advertising and the beginnings of artificial intelligence regulation. The findings, which were confirmed by a Bloomberg analysis of lobbying records, show that the effect of the accounting change was to lower the amount that Google reported spending to influence the federal government, likely by millions of dollars. The reorganization 'has allowed the company to shield a significant portion of its lobbying expenditures from public view,' the Tech Transparency Project said in its report. A Google spokesperson, José Castañeda, disputed the report and said the company has followed all relevant disclosure laws. 'These are inaccurate claims about a technical change that simply brought us in line with how many other companies report their lobbying activities,' he said. 'Our lobbying expenditures began decreasing in 2018, after we restructured our government affairs team and cut spending on consultants.' Internal Reshuffle Starting in 2019, Google began cutting ties with some of its external lobbying firms, a move it acknowledged publicly as part of an overhaul of its Washington operations. But the shuffling of external lobbying firms doesn't explain the whole of the decline in Google's reported lobbying expenses, which fell from more than $22 million in 2018 to $8.9 million in the Covid-disrupted year of 2020, and have subsequently remained well below pre-pandemic levels. There's been another, quieter change: in early 2020, Google moved its in-house lobbyists into a new subsidiary, called Google Client Services LLC. It's that unit which now files spending disclosures for Google's lobbying activities. The reorganization meant that the parent companies Google and Alphabet no longer directly employed any lobbyists – defined under federal disclosure law as people spending at least 20% of their time on influencing Congress or the executive branch. Companies that file lobbying disclosure reports are supposed to also account for the time that other senior executives — those who don't meet the 20% threshold – devote to lobbying, according to legal experts and the compliance guide for the Lobbying Disclosure Act published by Congressional leaders. That generally involves prorating their annual compensation to account for the days they spend influencing the government. But since Google moved lobbyists into the Google Client Services subsidiary, the parent company no longer meets the threshold for filing disclosures under the Lobbying Disclosure Act, according to the TTP analysis. That means Google no longer reports the lobbying expenses of high-ranking managers who aren't part of the Client Services unit — like Chief Executive Officer Sundar Pichai and chief legal officer Kent Walker — to the public, as it once did. As a result, in 2020 Google dropped out of the top 20 in corporate lobbying expenses for the first time in nearly a decade, the TTP analysis found. While Google's reported annual spending has since edged back up again, it hasn't come close to the No.1 slot in the company lobbying rankings that it used to occupy. For the past five years, that position has alternated between two other tech giants: Meta Platforms Inc. and Inc. Antitrust Challenge There's been plenty going in in Washington over the period that was crucial for Google's business. For one thing, the company — like many peers — is betting heavily on AI, a field where decisions in the US capital will shape the commercial landscape. Google has also been under assault from antitrust authorities over its dominance in search and digital advertising. The company has maintained in those lawsuits that its success is down to consumer choice and superior innovation, rather than a result of its power to shape laws and regulations. Publicity around its lobbying spending has the potential to undercut such arguments and alienate regulators. When executives are as highly paid as many in Silicon Valley, the prorated amounts can add up to millions — even for just a few days' worth of lobbying. Google reported total compensation for Pichai of more than $225 million in 2022, thanks to grants of stock. His total compensation was $10.7 million in 2024. Walker's total compensation was more than $30 million last year, the company reported. Some say the new structure Google is employing flouts the spirit of the federal disclosure law – if not the letter itself. 'This is just too cute by half,' said William Luneburg, a professor emeritus at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, and the co-editor of the manual for lobbying compliance published by the American Bar Association. 'On the face of it, it's wrong,' he said. 'They have to report all of their expenses, which would include the time of officers and directors and other employees that spend their time engaging in lobbying activity.' 'We always comply with disclosure laws and any suggestion of improper reporting is false,' said Castañeda, the Google spokesperson. TTP said it examined lobbying disclosures of several other companies that filed reports via a similar subsidiary model, but didn't find any that had used the structure to remove executive lobbying from their disclosures. —With assistance from Davey Alba and Sarah Frier. Americans Are Getting Priced Out of Homeownership at Record Rates Dubai's Housing Boom Is Stoking Fears of Another Crash Bessent on Tariffs, Deficits and Embracing Trump's Economic Plan Why It's Actually a Good Time to Buy a House, According to a Zillow Economist A $340 Million New York Office Makeover Is Converting Boardrooms to Bedrooms ©2025 Bloomberg L.P. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Wall Street Journal
15 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
WSJ Opinion: Trump's MAGA Pick for the Bureau of Labor Statistics
President Trump chooses Heritage Foundation economist E.J. Antoni to lead the BLS, the federal agency that collects data on inflation and the nation's jobs numbers. What is Antoni's public record? Does he have concrete plans to improve the statistics? Can he win Senate confirmation? And what about public trust?
