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Trade Wars
'The Plan Is Working': Trump's Trade Chief Brushes Off Economic Fears In Rust Belt Tour – Politico
China's Factories Snap Years-Long Deflation Spell On Iran War Price Shock - Reuters
Trump’s Latest Tariffs Face Trade Court Showdown – The Hill
Australia And US Boost Support For Critical Minerals With $3.5 Billion – Reuters
Anthropic Says New AI Model Too Dangerous For Public Release
Anthropic announced this week it will hold back the full release of its new AI model because it believes it is too dangerous for the public at this stage. The model, called Claude Mythos Preview, will be available to a select group of technology firms, including Microsoft, Apple, CrowdStrike and Amazon Web Services, along with more than 40 organizations that build critical software infrastructure, the AI firm announced Tuesday. This consortium is part of Anthropic’s new initiative Project Glasswing, which will focus on identifying and patching security vulnerabilities in critical software programs. The company said the initiative was formed after the company discovered the capabilities of Mythos Preview, stating the model “could reshape cybersecurity.”
The AI firm claimed Mythos Preview already found thousands of high-security vulnerabilities, including some in every major operating system and web browser, that were previously unknown to the software’s developers. Some of these vulnerabilities date back more than two decades, according to Anthropic. Prior to AI models like Mythos, these vulnerabilities could go undetected for years given the limited security expertise on the topic. Now, the technology is providing opportunities for hackers and foreign adversaries to more easily detect these vulnerabilities. Glasswing’s partner companies will use Mythos Preview in their defensive security work and findings will be shared by Anthropic for the whole industry. The organizations that build or maintain critical software infrastructure will use the model to scan first-party and open-source systems, Anthropic said.
Read more at The Hill
CoreWeave Strikes Multi-Year Deal To Power Anthropic's Claude AI Models
CoreWeave and Anthropic have signed a multi-year agreement, under which the cloud infrastructure company will provide compute to support the development and deployment of Anthropic's Claude family of AI models, CoreWeave said Friday. The capacity will come online starting later this year. Under the agreement, Anthropic will run workloads at production scale on CoreWeave's cloud platform. Infrastructure will be brought online in stages, the companies said, leaving room for the arrangement to grow beyond its initial scope. Financial terms were not disclosed.
"AI is no longer just about infrastructure, it's about the platforms that turn models into real-world impact," CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator said in a statement. "We're excited to work with Anthropic at the center of where models are put to work and performance in production shows up." The CoreWeave agreement adds to a busy stretch for the cloud provider. Just 24 hours before the Anthropic announcement, Meta $META -0.53% had agreed to direct an additional $21 billion toward CoreWeave, according to CNBC, layering on top of a $14.2 billion commitment the social media company had made previously.
Read more at Quartz
Meta, CoreWeave Deepen AI Cloud Partnership With Fresh $21 Billion Deal
Meta Platforms is deepening its CoreWeave partnership with a fresh $21 billion deal for additional cloud computing capacity, as it rushes to catch up with rivals in the high-stakes artificial intelligence race after an underwhelming AI model release last year. The latest deal, which extends through December 2032, is in addition to a similar $14.2 billion agreement signed in September, CoreWeave said on Thursday.
Meta has been rapidly expanding compute capacity to power the development and deployment of its large language models, benefiting companies such as CoreWeave, which provides clients with hardware and cloud resources. Close Nvidia ties have made CoreWeave a key supplier of the specialized AI chips that large tech companies are scrambling to secure. Thursday's deal gives Meta access to initial deployments of Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin chips, which are twice as fast as the current generation Blackwell platform.
Read more at Reuters
Volvo’s Global Sales Slump 11% In Q1, In Spite Of 12% Jump In EV Sales
Volvo Cars’ global vehicle sales dropped 11% in the first quarter of 2026, the company announced in an April 2 release. The automaker sold 153,316 units globally in Q1, down from 172,219 in the same period last year. Volvo’s European and rest of world region sales, which excludes Greater China and the Americas, reached 95,335 vehicles in Q1, a 2% YoY decline. Total vehicle sales in the Americas region decreased by 28% to 29,651 units, with sales of electrified models falling by 30% and sales of PHEVs declining by 36%. The automaker cited the loss of incentives on EV and PHEV purchases for the declines.
However, fully electric vehicles provided one bright spot, with global sales rising 12% year over year in Q1 to 36,348 units compared to 32,449 in the same period last year. Globally, electrified models represented 47.3% of all cars sold in Q1, becoming the highest among legacy premium carmakers, according to Volvo. Fully electric vehicles accounted for 23.7% of all Volvo Cars global sales in Q1, while the share of plug-in hybrid models accounted for 23.6%. “Fully electric cars remain the key growth driver for Volvo Cars and for the industry, reinforcing our strategy to grow and emerge as a leader in the premium fully electric car segment,” said Erik Severinson, Volvo Cars chief commercial officer, in a statement.
Read more at Ward’s Auto
Diageo Supplier To Idle 2 Kentucky Whiskey Distilleries
MGP Ingredients, a manufacturer of spirits and a supplier to giants like Diageo, will idle two Kentucky distilleries as sluggish consumption has created an alcohol surplus. The distiller said it will halt distilling operations at its Limestone Branch Distillery in Lebanon and Lux Row Distillers in Bardstown beginning May 1. The pause will last until “inventory levels support additional production,” which the company estimated would take at least one year. The halt in production will also result in 33 layoffs across the two facilities. Warehousing, bottling and barrel programs will continue.
As a surplus builds, whiskey and bourbon makers are now scaling back production. Spirits giant Suntory enacted a 12-month pause at Jim Beam’s main Kentucky facility this year. Competitors Diageo and Brown-Forman have also announced cutbacks. Production of distilled spirits fell 28% during the first eight months of 2025 compared to the same period in 2024, according to an economic assessment prepared for the Kentucky Distillers Association. “The American whiskey market continues to be structurally oversupplied, with excess capacity and elevated inventory,” Julie Francis, president and CEO of MGP Ingredients, said in a statement.
Read more at Supply Chain Dive
Over 1,300 Winchester Workers Strike At Army Ammunition Plant In Missouri
Approximately 1,350 workers went on strike on April 4 at chemical manufacturer Olin’s ammunitions plant in Independence, Missouri, after they rejected the company’s proposed contract, according to an International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers press release. Workers at the Lake City Army ammunition plant are represented by IAM Local 778. Details of Olin’s offer were not disclosed, but the Machinists union said in the press release that the company “failed to produce an offer that IAM Union members deemed fair on key issues, including wages, mandatory overtime and work-life balance.”
The Independence facility is operated by Olin’s subsidiary, Winchester, producing small arms cartridges ***such as including*** the 5.56mm, 7.62mm and .50 Caliber for the U.S. military, according to the company’s website. Specifically, it supplies the majority of rounds for the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps, according to the union’s fact sheet. In February 2025, the Army broke ground on an upcoming 6.8mm ammunition production facility at the Lake City Army site, which the service branch said will “play a vital role in advancing” its modernization priorities.
Read more at Manufacturing Dive
Navy Missile Request Highlights Industrial Base Challenges
The Navy is asking for nearly $8 billion for the purchase of 785 additional Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles ($3 billion) and 540 Standard Missile-6 air defense munitions ($4.33 billion). The request is vastly higher than the number of the same munitions the Navy purchased last year, highlighting the vastly increased demand for the two munitions caused by the present conflict in Iran. The Navy is also asking for 494 AIM-120 Advanced Medium-Range Air-to-Air Missiles (AMRAAM) ($804 million) and 141 MK-48 heavyweight torpedoes ($571 million) as part of a wider munition stocks buildup.
The US defense industrial base manufactures around 90 Tomahawk missiles per year. But that is not enough in today’s active operational environment. Indeed, it is estimated that in the past four years, the US military has gone through nearly 15 years’ worth of Tomahawk stockpiles. This was even before the current conflict, in which the United States has fired around 850 Tomahawk missiles—more than nine years’ production—in a single month. The Department of Defense has been urging the defense industry to increase its production capacity of key munitions, including the Tomahawk, SIM-6, and Patriot PAC-3 interceptor. It is a national security necessity that the industry meets the demand quickly and efficiently.
Read more at National Interest
Tech Industry Lays Off Nearly 80,000 Employees In The First Quarter Of 2026 — Almost 50% Of Affected Positions Cut Due To AI
78,557 workers in the tech industry have reportedly been laid off from January 1 to April 2026, with more than 76% of the affected positions located in the U.S. Nikkei Asia reports that 37,638 of these cuts, or 47.9%, have been attributed to the reduced need for human workers because of AI and workflow automation. Despite that, Cognizant Chief AI Officer Babak Hodjat says that it will still take more than a year before we completely see the impact of modern AI technologies on the workforce.
Despite all these analyses, some experts are pushing back against this narrative, pointing out that AI-driven layoffs were just being used as an excuse for poor business performance. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said during the India AI Impact Summit, “I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs.” While they say that some of these layoffs would still happen with or without AI, there’s still a consensus that the technology would have an impact on jobs and that we should be ready for a disruption.
Read More at Tom’s Hardware
Delta’s Ace in the Hole for Surging Jet Fuel Costs: Its Own Refinery
Airlines face billions of dollars of pain at the fuel pump. One carrier, though, happens to own its own gas station. Since 2012, Delta Air Lines has been the owner of a Pennsylvania refinery that processes crude into fuel. Over the years, the investment has looked like either a stroke of genius or a boondoggle, generally depending on the price of oil. Since the U.S. and Israel began carrying out strikes on Iran, the refinery is set to pay off again for Delta.
Jet-fuel prices roughly doubled since late February, climbing to about $4.80 a gallon in the U.S. earlier this week, according to Argus. Deutsche Bank analysts estimate that if prices stay at those levels, airlines collectively would be on the hook for $40 billion more in fuel spending this year compared with what they were paying before the war began. Delta isn’t immune. It expects its fuel bill to balloon by $2 billion in the second quarter. But with its refinery, Delta has an asset that it said can help it offset some of the recent surge in fuel prices. The airline said the refinery will boost its expected second-quarter earnings by $300 million.
Read more at the WSJ
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