Top stories today:

1. U.S., EU strike deal with 15% tariffs on most EU exports
2. Alibaba unveils its most advanced open-weight “reasoning” model
3. DOGE said to have built AI tool to cut 50% of federal regulations
4. Anthropic in talks to raise $3B-$5B at $150B+ valuation
5. Tesla fell short of 5K Optimus robot goal by 2025-end

0. Data and calendar

Listen to our AI-generated podcast summarizing today’s newsletter (beware of hallucinations):

1. U.S., EU strike deal with 15% tariffs on most EU exports

EU, the top U.S. import source, could face steeper tariffs than it imposes on U.S. goods:

• Aug. 1: the 15% rates will take effect.

• The aim is to rebalance a trade surplus with the U.S., European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said.

Pharma and cars are the top U.S. imports from the EU so far

• Senior U.S. officials later said the 2 sides agreed on a 15% tariff level for the EU’s pharma exports as well.

• The EU agreed to buy $750B in American energy products, invest $600B in the U.S. on top of existing expenditures, Trump said.

• The EU will maintain 0% tariffs on most U.S. imports.

• EU steel and aluminum aren’t covered by the deal and will still face 50% tariffs.

Trump’s tariffs have lowered growth expectations, with U.S. momentum lagging since his “Liberation Day”

U.S. tariffs are already the highest in decades before the Aug. 1 deadline

Investment forecasts are lower after Trump’s tariffs

Equities, bonds, and volatility have recovered since April’s shocks, but the U.S. dollar remains under pressure

2. Alibaba unveils its most advanced Qwen open-weight “reasoning” model

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking-2507 is on par OpenAI’s o4-mini and Gemini 2.5 Pro on benchmark scores shared by Alibaba:

• Apache 2.0 licensed.

• Priced at $0.70/M input and $8.40/M output tokens, versus o4-mini’s $1.10/M and $4.40/M, respectively.

• Available for download via Hugging Face and ModelScope.

• Accessible through Qwen Chat.

Qwen3-235B-A22B-Thinking-2507 is censoring content critical of the Chinese government

4. DOGE said to have built AI tool to cut 50% of federal regulations