Amazon reports solid 2Q results despite Trump tariffs
The Seattle-based company also offered on Thursday a sales outlook for the current quarter that beat analysts' projections.
Still, it shares fell 3.0 per cent in after-market trading.
The company also reported 17.5 per cent growth for its prominent cloud computing arm Amazon Web Services.
The results come even as uncertainty about US President Donald Trump's tariffs have challenged companies and consumers. But Amazon and other large retailers have tried to beat the clock by bringing in foreign goods before Trump's tariffs took effect. Amazon, like many other big retailers, has the clout to negotiate prices with its suppliers.
Meanwhile, Amazon is one of the biggest players in the race around generative artificial intelligence.
Like other tech companies, it has increased investments in the technology and is spending billions to expand data centres that power AI and cloud computing. The company is also investing in its own computer chips and those developed by Nvidia. It has also expanded its own AI models and integrated generative AI into other parts of its business.
In March Amazon began testing AI-aided dubbing for select movies and shows offered on its Prime streaming service. A month earlier, the company rolled out a generative-AI infused Alexa.
Company CEO Andy Jassy anticipates generative AI will also allow Amazon to reduce its corporate workforce in the next few years.
Amazon earned $US18.16 billion ($A28.21 billion), or $US1.68 ($A2.61) per share, for the quarter ended June 30. That's up from $US13.49 billion ($A20.96 billion), or $US1.26 ($A1.96) per share, in the year-ago period.
Revenue rose to $US167.7 billion ($A260.5 billion) from $US147.9 billion ($A229.8 billion) a year ago.
The company's sales were helped by Amazon's Prime event amid tariff-related price worries. For the first time, Amazon held Prime Day over four days instead of two.
Analysts expected earnings per share of $US1.33 ($A2.07) on sales of $US162.19 billion ($A251.97 billion) for the quarter, according to FactSet.
The company said it expects sales for the current quarter of between $US174 billion ($A270 billion) and $US179.5 billion ($A278.9 billion). Analysts expected $US173.27 billion ($A269.18 billion) for the current quarter, according to FactSet.
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ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
Did Donald Trump just give China a major advantage on AI?
Last month, the Trump administration quietly reversed one of its own policies by lifting a ban on US tech giant Nvidia's H20 microchip exports to China. For anyone who has followed Donald Trump's erratic record on trade, another U-turn might not sound like a notable development. But this time, the stakes are much higher because these microchips are critical to powering the next generation of artificial intelligence. Whichever country dominates microchip production will likely lead the global AI race, with massive implications for military strategy and economic output. For nearly three years, the US has tried to keep these powerful chips out of China's hands. Now, by reopening the door, has Mr Trump handed Beijing a major advantage on AI? We spoke to three experts to explain how we got here. Back in April, the Trump administration banned H20 microchip exports to China, toughening restrictions put in place by the Biden administration. It has since reversed that decision. According to Jason Van Der Schyff, a fellow at Australian Strategic Policy Institute's technology and security program, this backflip may be in response to the booming black market demand for high-powered US chips in China. "Over a billion dollars worth of restricted chips were smuggled into China in just a few months," he said. "The reversal may be a pivot by the administration, recognising if you don't offer a legal channel for the slightly degraded chips, buyers will simply go around you." Professor Shahriar Akter, who specialises in the study of advanced analytics and AI at the University of Wollongong said this move seems to follow "a philosophy in Silicon Valley that if you sell more" it will pour more back into "your research and development". Associate Professor in Information Systems at Curtin University, Mohammad Hossain, suggested the Trump administration is trying to kill two birds with one stone. The US is trying to maintain leverage in a broader geopolitical trade-off involving China's critical exports, rare earth elements, while "keeping China dependent on US technology", he said. Nvidia is the tech giant behind these highly sought after microchips and it is led by CEO Jensen Huang who is the ninth-richest man in the world. The H20 is a step-down from Nvidia's top-tier chips (H100 and B200) and was specifically designed to comply with US export restrictions while catering to the Chinese market. "Basically, [H100 and B200 chips] can do things much faster than the H20," Mr Van Der Schyff said. "If we consider how quickly AI is moving any impediment that could be brought to time more than anything is going to maintain that US strategic advantage." While the H20 is less powerful, Mr Van Der Schyff warns that "these aren't toys … even slightly downgraded chips still enable model training at scale". "If you're concerned about national security, letting an adversary access chips that are only one rung down the ladder still poses a strategic risk." While the US hopes to stall China's progress in artificial intelligence, experts warn this strategy may have the opposite effect. China's push to dominate AI is already underway and restricting exports to only H20 chips incentivises them to accelerate domestic developments. "At present in the world, 50 per cent of AI researchers are being produced by China alone," Dr Akter said. Chinese tech giants like Huawei and Biren Technology have been ramping up their own AI accelerators. "Huawei's chips are already being deployed in major training clusters," Mr Van Der Schyff said. Still, China's domestic developments trail behind industry leaders like Taiwan's TSMC and South Korea's Samsung when it comes to cutting-edge manufacturing. "There isn't necessarily a danger that China catches up overnight but these restrictions do however give Beijing a clear incentive to sort of go all in on industrial policy for their own semiconductors to accelerate domestic progress," Mr Van Der Schyff said. "We've seen this play out previously with 5G and also with aviation." All three experts cautioned that it's difficult to gauge China's true AI capabilities. "Given the closed nature of China's systems and their propensity to not always tell us the truth", it's unclear how much China's artificial intelligence has developed, Mr Van Der Schyff said. Dr Akter used an analogy to explain the uncertainty: "There are two types of AI technologies", one is called glass box and the other is called black box. "Glass box technology is basically explainable AI, which is open source and we can explain where data is coming from and how it is being used to develop AI models and what would be the outcome." Whereas, black box technology is the opposite, we cannot trace back to the source of the data and we cannot tell what models have been used. That opacity makes it difficult for the rest of the world to assess whether Beijing is playing catch-up or quietly pulling ahead. The country that has the upper hand in microchip production will likely lead the global AI race and that has significant repercussions, experts said. "The country that dominates compute will dominate AI, and AI will shape everything from military planning to economic productivity."
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Trump's crypto mania poses a risk for our super
This distinct lack of guardrails, and the well-known volatility of crypto – data shows that over the past decade the cryptocurrency market has been almost five times as volatile as the US sharemarket – is one thing when it's young investors who are eager to take high risk for possible high reward. But it's another when people's retirements are involved. One of the most likely reasons for this loosening of regulations (gold and private investments are also set to be added to what US funds can invest in) is that the industry is under increasing pressure globally to find new investment options and maximise returns because of our ageing population. The pension system in the UK, for example, is expected to reach a crisis point within the next two decades, with many people predicted to retire with less than they may have expected. Loading You can see, then, why cryptocurrency suddenly looks promising. But here is where another likely reason for this shift also arises and, depending on your politics, is either a problem so glaring it might as well be an entire herd of elephants in the room, or is simply shrewd business ingenuity. The US government is currently led by a man who, along with his family, has a bitcoin mining farm and reserve. They have launched their own crypto coins, stablecoin and crypto trading app. It's estimated that $US2.9 billion ($4.5 billion) of the Trump family's wealth – roughly 40 per cent – is tied to their digital investments. And on Wednesday, the White House launched a 160-page document outlining how the government will bring to life the president's promise to bolster digital assets. Trump isn't just pro-crypto, he's driving the pro-crypto bus. Again, investing and being hungry for risk is one thing. But when the money being invested is retirement funds, it's a different ball game. Considering cryptocurrencies are still such a new asset class, there's no long-term performance data to assess their suitability for super investments. But already, there is a cautionary tale to look to. In 2022, a Canadian pension plan for teachers that invested in crypto lost $147 million in invested funds following the collapse of digital currency exchange FTX. While retirement funds are worth billions and $147 million might not sound like all that much in the grand scheme of things, try telling that to the hardworking teacher who was a year away from retirement and suddenly faced working longer due to bad investments. Currently in Australia, the only way to invest in crypto using superannuation is through a self-managed fund. But two things are worth noting here. The first is that there are more than 600,000 self-managed funds, and that with more than $750 billion in assets, they represent roughly a third of our national super sector. The second is that in February, soon after Trump's return to the White House, Australia's industry leaders and Treasurer Jim Chalmers travelled to the US for a 'super summit', in an attempt to try to win over American financial executives and the US government. Loading Currently, about $US400 billion of our super is invested in US assets, which translates to roughly 14 per cent of all Australian investments. However, that's expected to grow to more than $US1 trillion over the next decade. Whether these assets will one day include crypto remains to be seen. But the fact that American funds – which have the biggest pool of money in the world – now can more freely look to crypto than ever before, and that Australia is so hungry to remain economically close to the US, is something that should make us sit up and pay attention. Victoria Devine is an award-winning retired financial adviser, bestselling author and host of Australia's No.1 finance podcast, She's on the Money. She is also founder and director of Zella Money.
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
It's the summer of Trump and the world can't look away
Returning to the US for the first time in four years, I found a country that didn't want to talk about politics, despite being in the eye of the Trump storm. When the seasons of Trumpism come to be revisited, the summer of 2025 will seem like an especially frenzied blur. History at its most haywire. During it, we witnessed President Donald J. Trump in full. The unpredictable commander-in-chief who ordered a quick, sharp strike on Iran's nuclear facilities. The America Firster who browbeat NATO allies into stumping up more money for their self-defence, thereby ratcheting up pressure on Australia to make equivalent GDP-share spending commitments. The tough-talking protectionist, determined to up-end the terms of global commerce, who scored victories in the trade war by forcing the European Union and Japan to accept higher tariffs on their exports to America. The MAGA provocateur who imposed his policy of mass deportations on Los Angeles surely knowing it would spark a stand-off with California's Democratic Governor, Gavin Newsom, which is precisely what happened when he placed the California National Guard under his control and sent in US Marines. Summer brought his very own blockbuster, the passage of the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" which rewarded the rich with tax cuts and punished the poor with cuts in Medicaid and what used to be called food stamps. Trump signed the centrepiece of his legislative agenda into law on July 4, the deadline he had set for lawmakers, and then delivered an address from the balcony of the White House, a pulpit his predecessors have generally not used for presidential addresses, partly because it seemed so kingly. There was a certain historical irony, then, in an Independence Day picnic on the White House lawn being transformed into a Trumpian pageant. US President Donald Trump presents the sweeping spending and tax legislation, known as the "One Big Beautiful Bill Act," after he signed it, at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., July 4, 2025. ( Reuters: Leah Mills ) There have been dog days, too. When pressure from the MAGA base mounted for his Justice Department to release "the Epstein files", Trump the conspiracy mongerer became Trump the conspiracy denier as he implored his supporters to believe there had been no deep state cover-up after all around disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a one-time close friend. When that strategy failed, he fabricated a new conspiracy, blaming Barack Obama, Joe Biden and "Radical Left Democrats" for conjuring up yet another plot to discredit him. "Their new SCAM is what we will forever call the Jeffery Epstein Hoax," he hurrumphed on social media, "and my PAST supporters have bought into this 'bullshit' hook, line, and sinker." Amidst the clammer to release the Epstein list, Trump had dusted off his enemies list. In the latest twist, Trump told reporters he fell out with Epstein because his Palm Beach neighbour 'stole' staff from his Mar-a-Lago country club, including Virginia Giuffre, who died by suicide in April this year. Trump is skilled at the art of the distraction, more so than the art of the deal. Shifting the media's gaze has become something of a political superpower. The president who promised to pull back the curtain on the secrets on the deep state suddenly looked to many of his MAGA supporters like he was the deep state. As all this played out, I made my first trip back to the United States since leaving four years ago, the longest spell I have spent out of a country since adolescence. This three-week visit started with the new protocols of Trump era travel, such as being required as part of the visa application process to reveal social media handles and entering the immigration hall with the possibility that border officials would demand access to my phone and laptop. The thrill of entering America which I felt as a teenager was replaced by a sense of mild unease. Throughout the summer, the American melodrama brought tragedy and farce. There was heartbreak in Texas Hill Country, where flash floods took the lives of at least 135 victims, including 27 children and counsellors at Camp Mystic. Early July also brought the opening of "Alligator Alcatraz" in the Florida Everglades, a makeshift detention centre set up to help with the immigration crackdown. After touring its fenced-in bunk beds — facilities slammed as inhumane by immigration rights groups — Trump quickly proffered his presidential imprimatur. Then he offered advice to reporters on how to outrun an alligator, using zigzagging hand gestures to drive home his point. Trump visits a temporary migrant detention centre informally known as "Alligator Alcatraz" in Ochopee, Florida. ( Reuters: Evelyn Hockstein ) Then there was his latest attempt to profit from the presidency, a range of fragrances. "Victory 45-47", which comes in a bottle emblazoned with his signature and topped with a gold plastic statuette of the president, sells for $249 a pop. As well as perfume, there was poison. His feud with Elon Musk, the one-time "First Buddy", became more venomous, with the world's richest man announcing the formation of his own political party. There was a resumption of hostilities with the comedian Rosie O'Donnell, whose citizenship he threatened to revoke. To coincide with the release of the new Superman movie, the White House naturally created its own Superman meme, with Trump cast as the superhero, crimson cape and all. "THE SYMBOL OF HOPE. TRUTH. JUSTICE. THE AMERICAN WAY. SUPERMAN TRUMP," read the official White House X account. June and July also brought two important MAGA milestones, both of them red letter days vested with near sacred meaning. June 16 marked the 10th anniversary of the start of his first bid for the presidency, when he came down that golden escalator at Trump Tower. July 13 was the first anniversary of the attempt on his life in Butler, Pennsylvania, when a bullet shaved his right ear. This near death experience has come to be regarded almost as a celestial event: proof in the president's mind that God spared his life so he could be restored to the White House. Trump and wife Melania watch fireworks during the celebration of the Army's 250th birthday on the National Mall. ( Reuters: Doug Mills ) On June 14, two birthdays coincided: Trump's 79th and the US Army's 250th. These events were twinned when the Pentagon staged a mammoth anniversary parade through the streets of Washington. It's "gonna be better and bigger than any parade we've ever had in this country," said the president with typical braggadocio, "a spectacular military parade in Washington, D.C., like no other." A Trump tattoo. So all consuming is the spectacle of Trump's second term that it is easy to underplay the substance. The "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" — it really is officially called that — has giant ramifications. Over the next decade, it will add at least $3.4 trillion to the US deficit, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, an eye-watering figure roughly twice the size of Australia's entire GDP for 2024. As a result of his tax cuts, Americans in the top 20 per cent will see their incomes raised by 2.2 per cent, according to analysis from the Yale Budget Lab. Those in the bottom 20 per cent will see their incomes fall by 2.9 per cent. Put another way, that wealthy cohort will get a boost of about $5,700. The poor will be $700 worse off. Cuts to Medicaid, which provides health cover for low-income and vulnerable Americans, could result in more than 42,500 deaths annually, according to public health experts at the University of Pennsylvania and Yale. Nearly 12 million Americans stand to lose their coverage. The inflationary effects of the president's trade war, another signature policy, are also starting to have a hip pocket effect. Inflation rose to 2.7 per cent in June, up from 2.4 per cent in May. The price of eggs, which Trump famously promised to bring down, has risen by 27 per cent since this time last year. But the stock markets, which dipped sharply after Trump's Liberation Day tariff announcements, have soared in recent weeks. In late June, both the S&P 500 and the NASDAQ reached record highs, and then continued breaking records. The markets seemed unperturbed by Trump's threats to fire the chairman of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, another summertime storyline which bordered on the slapstick. In mid-July, Trump bizarrely expressed surprise that Joe Biden had appointed Powell in the first place, seemingly forgetting that he himself had hand-picked the Fed Chairman back in 2017. Then, in a photo-op which seemed to come straight from the satire Veep, the president found himself fact-checked by Powell in real-time after inflating claims of a cost blowout in the Federal Reserve's renovation program. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell fact checked Trump on the go. ( Reuters: Kent Nishimura ) With those B2 bomber raids and bunker buster bombs targeted at Iran's nuclear program, his boldest foreign policy move yet, Trump demonstrated the unmatched might of America's hard power. Simultaneously, he continued to erode his country's soft power. More than 1,500 staff at the US State Department were laid off in July, cuts which brought to mind the warning from General James Mattis, who served as Defence Secretary in Trump's first term: "If you don't fund the State Department fully, then I need to buy more ammunition." The Trump administration's cuts to US foreign aid, where 80 per cent of all programs have been cancelled, have been devastating. A report published in The Lancet medical journal at the start of July warned they could cause more than 14 million additional deaths by 2030. Children are thought to be particularly vulnerable. The report projected that 4.5 million infants under the age of 5 could die as a result of these America First cuts. When it comes to strengthening America's borders, the Trump administration has been delivering on its promise. By mid-July, illegal border crossings had fallen to their lowest levels ever recorded, according to US Customs and Border Protection. Late June also saw the lowest number of apprehensions on a single day on record — just 136. In early June, an executive order came into effect banning travel from 12 countries, including Afghanistan, Haiti and the Republic of Congo, with travellers from seven other nations, such as Cuba and Venezuela, facing tighter restrictions. Just over six months into his second term, this is fast turning into one of the most consequential presidencies of the past 70 years, on a par with the Reagan Revolution and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society reform program. The Epstein scandal aside, supporters see a president delivering on border protection, restoring the fear factor to US foreign policy without embroiling the country in endless entanglements, and putting wokeism to the sword with his onslaught against diversity, equity and inclusion. Opponents see an unstable president on a narcissistic power trip: the head of a cult-like movement imperilling the modern-day norms of US democracy. In a country which next summer will mark its 250th birthday, Trump continues to personify and magnify American disunion. For my summer visit, rather than as a journalist, I was there as a visitor. But in a country where pretty much everything is politicised Trump's giant shadow hangs over the tourist trail. How can you peer across New York harbour at the Statue of Liberty and not wonder if democracy is under assault from a president who refused to accept the result of the 2020 election and sparked a rebellion on January 6, 2021, to overturn it? How can you drive through the civil war battlefields of the South, as I did in Tennessee, and not be reminded of the divisions he seems to delight in aggravating, and his decision to rename seven military bases in honour of Confederate leaders who fought to uphold slavery? How could you listen, as I did during a patriotic celebration on July 4, to a town elder recite words from Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address — that there should be "government of the people, for the people, by the people" — without pondering the question posed at the end of that classic 272-word address: whether this nation "could long endure". Politics is always on tap. On my first morning in Manhattan, I stumbled across the Pride March heading down Broadway, and immediately came face to face with Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old democratic socialist who had just pulled off a shock victory in the New York mayoral primary by beating the former governor, Andrew Cuomo. On the evening I touched down in Los Angeles, the Trump administration announced that about half of the California National Guard troops who had been deployed to police the protests against the ICE raids would be placed back under the control of Governor Newsom. New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. ( Reuters: Kylie Cooper ) Yet despite the fact that Trump provided much of the background noise for my travels, I was struck by how few people brought him up in conversation. For all his omnipresence in the media, I did not see a single Make America Great Again cap, bumper sticker or T-shirt depicting him as The Terminator or Rambo. This was true even in the South. At a country music joint in Nashville, where singer-songwriters performed their greatest hits, there was not even the slightest hint of politics during the two-hour set. Likewise, at a mega-church the following morning, it would have been impossible to tell from the songs, prayers and liturgy who resided in the White House. Towards the end of her sermon, the preacher, a female African-American pastor, recited words from the bible that were echoed by Abraham Lincoln in his famed 1858 Springfield speech that "a house divided against itself cannot stand", but she was referring to divisions in the church rather than within the country. During my stay in Nashville, I visited one of the city's main visitor attractions, The Hermitage slave plantation owned by Andrew Jackson, the country's first populist president and a former general who often rode roughshod over Congress and the courts. But even though Trump regards Jackson as a presidential kindred spirit, and visited The Hermitage during his first term to pay homage to "Old Hickory", this also felt like a Trump-lite zone. For sure, the sight of Jackson's famed maxim in the museum's entrance hall — "I was born for the storm, the calm does not suit me" — evoked the present incumbent of the White House, but throughout our tour nobody made any reference towards this obvious connection. Nor in the gift shop did I see any merchandise connected to Andrew Jackson's 21st-century alter ego. During his first term, as I travelled through the American heartland listening to voter reaction to his presidency, I was constantly struck by how few Americans were aware of his latest tweet, insult, blow-up or scandalous imbroglio. This journey drove home that same simple but telling point. Though Trump dominates almost every waking hour of reporters and editors, he does not monopolise the lives of everyday Americans to anywhere near the same extent. Though the Trump White House is constantly on a political war footing, with outlets such as Rupert Murdoch's Fox News amplifying his battle cries, most American people do not regard themselves as full-time combatants. While Trump continually attempts to raise the temperature to boiling point, there is a large body of Americans keen to lower it. For sure, the United States remains chronically polarised with divisions over race, abortion, guns, the rules of democracy and how the country's history should be told and commemorated. But these are not conflicts fought at Trumpian intensity on an hourly or daily basis. Even when the Epstein scandal blew up, it did not feel as if the entire nation was following every twist and turn. At times I even wondered whether the watching world is paying closer attention than Americans themselves. The "No Kings" protest against Donald Trump in Philadelphia in June. ( ABC News: Matt Davis ) Not for one moment am I suggesting there has been a truce in America's cold civil war. There is resistance for sure. In mid-June, "No Kings" protests were held in 820 different locations. In mid-July, another mass mobilisation, the "Good Trouble Lives On" protests, unfolded in more than 1,600 places. Yet despite the large number of protesters who took to the streets, I did not observe the fierce anger of his first term. Many Democrats seemed prepared to wait him out. Some fear that strong resistance will only play into his hands, and provide him with a pretext to crack down on dissent. Many believe the lower courts will slow him down, if not completely restrain him, and that in next year's congressional mid-term elections the Democrats stand a strong chance of taking back control of the House of Representatives, where the party needs a net gain of just three seats to wrestle power from the Republicans. It is almost possible, among his critics, to detect a mood of melancholic resignation: the sense that abnormal is America's new normal; that the Trump genie will never be put back in the bottle. Noticeable over the American summer was how the term "lame duck" started creeping into reportage, the phrase used to describe a second-term president prevented by the 22nd Amendment to the US Constitution from running again. Usually this hackneyed term suggests a waning of power, but Trump has succeeded to a large extent in consolidating and expanding his presidential writ. Though the Epstein controversy has exposed fissures in the MAGAverse, Republicans on Capitol Hill are more loyal and disciplined than they were during his first administration. Even with majorities in both houses of Congress, it was quite the legislative achievement to win enactment of the big beautiful bill ahead of his July 4 deadline, and one which demonstrated the control he exerts over a Republican party largely purged of dissenters. During the summer, the conservative-dominated Supreme Court also handed him major judicial victories. In a ruling which boosted Trump's power and also its own, the court decided, six votes to three, to limit the ability of individual judges in the lower federal courts from issuing injunctions to block his policies. What made this ruling doubly significant was that it pertained to his attempt to limit birthright citizenship through the signing of a presidential executive order, which critics blasted as a flagrant attempt to re-write with his famed Sharpie pen the 14th Amendment of the US constitution. Aided by an often pliant Supreme Court, Trump continues to alter the balance of power between the three branches of US government, the executive, the legislature and the judiciary, so that more authority is concentrated in the White House. This, then, is becoming a most imperial presidency. From pressuring Coca Cola to use cane sugar rather than corn syrup to demanding that the Washington Commanders NFL team revert to its former name, the Redskins, he clearly believes that he can intervene in and alter virtually every facet of American life. Certainly, Trump is no lame duck. As if to drive home this point, sections of the US media are opting for appeasement over adversarialism. Paramount, the parent company of CBS, surrendered to Trump over one of his frivolous lawsuits, paying him $16 million to settle a case centring on the editing of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris. Paramount is trying to pull off a mega-merger with Skydance, which needs the approval of Trump's Federal Communications Commission. When CBS cancelled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, a host unafraid to voice on-air criticisms of his Paramount paymasters, the comedian was widely seen as a sacrificial offering. "I absolutely love that Colbert got fired," Trump rejoiced on social media. "I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next," he added, referring to the late night talk show host on ABC, who the president has sparred with for years. In another MAGA victory, Trump also managed to starve federal funding from the public broadcasters PBS and NPR, a bete noire of Republicans for decades. Routinely now, he is trying to cow the media into submission. His response to an explosive Epstein-related story published by The Wall Street Journal, based on a lewd letter Trump allegedly wrote to his then friend more than 20 years ago which spoke of a "wonderful secret", was to sue Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the newspaper, and to ban the masthead from being part of the press pool covering his trip to Scotland. [#configsm4x3md4x3lg4x3anon [trump] Donald Trump is far more representative of America's past and present than detractors would concede. The kind of fanaticism, nativism, white male supremacy, Christian nationalism and conspiratorialism which he taps into have been through-lines of the American story. But that is not the same as saying Trump is successfully moulding America in his own image. Unlike Ronald Reagan, who won 49 out of 50 states in his landslide re-election victory in 1984, he has struggled to win over a simple majority of compatriots. At the 2024 election, even though he became the first Republican since George W Bush in 2004 to win the popular vote, he received only a 49.8 per cent share. His victory, though clear-cut, was historically speaking narrow. By just 233,000 votes did Kamala Harris lose the three crucial Rust Belt states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Had this trifecta of battlegrounds ended up in the Democratic column, she would have become America's first female president. At no time during his first or second term has Trump cracked the symbolically important 50 per cent presidential approval rating as measured by Gallup. Since this blue-ribbon polling organisation first started gauging presidential popularity in the late 1930s, he is the only president not to rise above this threshold. His average second term approval rating is 43 per cent. Despite what he presented as a string of victories in Iran, on Capitol Hill and at the Supreme Court — "has anyone ever had a better two weeks?" he boastfully asked during what he regarded as salad days for his presidency — an Economist/You Gov poll published in mid-July suggested his approval rating was just 41 per cent, the lowest of his second term. As for the Big Beautiful Bill, a CNN/SSRS poll found that 61 per cent of respondents opposed it. When I first visited the United States as a wide-eyed teenager, I got to experience the country's great summertime of resurgence. It was 1984, the year of the Los Angeles Olympics. Chants of "USA, USA" celebrated the gold rush achieved by the host nation's athletes. It was the first time this incantation had been heard coast to coast, and it helped exorcise some of the ghosts of Vietnam, Watergate and the Iranian hostage crisis. That year, as part of his bid for re-election, Ronald Reagan came up with the slogan "It's Morning Again in America," which perfectly encapsulated the optimistic mood of the times. From the White House comes the same triumphalism, albeit more nationalist than patriotic. But the first summertime of the Trump restoration, of which there is still a month left to run, has been an altogether darker and more schismatic time. Credits Words: Nick Bryant Editor: Leigh Tonkin Illustrations: Kylie Silvester Photographs: Reuters, Matt Davis
