August 6 2025

Six Months In, Trump Tariffs Deliver Billions in Revenue But Little Economic Upheaval

Detroit Reverses Course, Embraces Gas Guzzlers Amid Trump's War on EVs

Tiny Shift in Brain Chemistry May Set Humans Apart from Neanderthals, Study Finds

Use of AI to 'Speak' With Slain Teen Draws Outrage and Ethical Concerns

NFL Takes 10% Stake in ESPN in Blockbuster Media Deal

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1. Six Months in, Trump Tariffs Deliver Billions in Revenue but Little Economic Upheaval

Trump—and his critics—have described his tariffs as an earthquake that would transform the U.S. economy. So far, the impact has been mostly a series of tremors. In recent months, the president pledged that a new tariff regime would slash the trade deficit and force manufacturers to move production back to the U.S. His detractors warned that the tariffs would spark sharp inflation and even shortages in stores as soon as this summer. Six months into the experiment, with more tariff announcements likely in the coming days, the economy hasn’t crashed. Inflation has ticked up but not soared. Consumers aren’t finding empty shelves. As Trump promised, the tariffs have brought tens of billions in extra revenue to federal coffers. That is a significant sum of money, but not enough to replace income taxes in the way Trump has suggested. New data Tuesday showed the trade deficit narrowing in June, to the lowest level since September 2023. Economists said that appeared to be mostly a reversal of the huge import surge before tariffs hit, rather than a sign of a sustained downward trend in the trade deficit. Some of Trump’s other pledges aren’t materializing, either. Companies aren’t broadly rushing to reshore, partly because the chaotic and ever-changing tariff policy has paralyzed decision-making. Some economists say it is also because the tariffs aren’t steep enough to force many types of manufacturing to relocate to the U.S. Trump’s actions so far have raised the effective average tariff rate on all imported goods to roughly 18%, from 2.3% last year. Those are the highest levels since the 1930s.

WSJ

2. Detroit Reverses Course, Embraces Gas Guzzlers Amid Trump's War on EVs

The Trump administration’s war on EVs will allow the auto industry to keep selling big, gas-powered vehicles for the foreseeable future. Detroit is thrilled. U.S. automakers are tearing up the playbooks they created when EVs were in high demand and government regulations forced them to pour resources into developing cleaner, more fuel-efficient engines. “This is a multibillion-dollar opportunity over the next couple of years,” Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley said last week in a call with analysts. Ford already is changing its lineup, he said, scaling back EV plans and looking to leverage demand for its big SUVs and commercial vehicles. After the highly anticipated EV boom in the U.S. fizzled out, President Trump and Congress set out to eliminate state and federal regulations they argue were designed to mandate battery-powered vehicles for American consumers. The result—stripping California’s ability to set its own emissions standards, aiming to eliminate greenhouse-gas rules, zeroing out costly fuel-economy fines—has left Detroit carmakers openly touting the extended lifespan of the internal combustion engine. The rapidly shifting perspective illustrates how auto executives are adjusting on the fly to the new regulatory landscape unlocked by Trump. The policy changes will help compensate for Trump’s auto tariffs that are costing the companies billions this year, and allow them to overhaul vehicle lineups that, until recently, were destined to be replaced by EVs. The industry also will save on regulatory credits designed to offset potential fuel economy and emissions fines. Since 2022, Ford, GM and Stellantis have spent nearly $10 billion on regulatory credits and fuel-economy rule-violation fines. General Motors, which until recently said it hoped to do away with internal combustion engines by 2035, extolled to investors the benefits of keeping them around.

WSJ

3. Tiny Shift in Brain Chemistry May Set Humans Apart From Neanderthals, Study Finds

Scientists have a new clue in the long quest to decipher what makes us uniquely human: tiny changes in brain chemistry that set us apart from our closest hominin cousins. In a study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, an international team of researchers scrutinized a version of a gene, ubiquitous in humans today, that is not present in Neanderthals or Denisovans — the hominins that lived alongside our ancestors. In a lab dish, the modern form of the gene in humans today made an enzyme less stable than the one found in hominin relatives. When researchers introduced that version into mice, they found that in females, it triggered a behavioral change — the mice were more adept at seeking water. It’s an intriguing clue — not an answer — to the question of how subtle changes to brain biochemistry may have meant the difference between hominins that went extinct and those that persisted and thrived.

Washington Post

4. Use of AI to 'Speak' With Slain Teen Draws Outrage and Ethical Concerns

The independent journalist Jim Acosta sparked an intense backlash this week with what he called a “one of a kind interview”: A video of him talking with an AI-generated avatar modeled on Joaquin Oliver, a teenager killed in the Parkland high school shooting in 2018. The video, which the former CNN White House correspondent posted Monday to his Substack newsletter, began with Acosta making small talk about LeBron James and “Star Wars” with the late teenager’s AI duplicate, which Oliver’s father created to bring attention to gun violence. Trained on an old photo and audio recordings of Oliver, the AI avatar used a chatbot to generate answers and delivered them in what sounded like his voice. During Acosta’s conversation with the computer program, he celebrated it as “so insightful” and a “beautiful thing,” saying, “I really felt like I was speaking with Joaquin.” But the AI avatar offered awkward remarks (“Yoda’s wisdom and quirky personality bring so much fun to the series”) and repeatedly asked Acosta questions back, such as “Who inspires you to be a hero in your own life?” The video was panned online as “extremely unsettling” and “ghoulish,” with many people citing concerns that such technology could be used to create beliefs the person may not have supported and to tarnish the memory of the dead.

Washington Post

5. NFL Takes 10% Stake in ESPN in Blockbuster Media Deal

The National Football League has struck a wide-reaching deal with Disney in which it will take a 10% stake in the ESPN sports empire in return for control of key media assets including NFL Network. Neither Disney nor the NFL would disclose the value of the ESPN stake. Analysts have estimated ESPN’s valuation at between $25 billion and $30 billion, putting the NFL’s piece in the $2.5 billion to $3 billion range. The tie-up, between two of the biggest names in entertainment and sports, furthers the symbiotic relationship between media companies and athletic leagues that is moving beyond just traditional rights deals to televise games. Through a content partnership with Skydance Media, the NFL will also have equity in rights holder CBS after Skydance closes its deal to acquire the network’s parent Paramount Global this week. Under the terms of the agreement, ESPN will add NFL Network to its stable of sports channels. It will also distribute the NFL’s Red Zone channel to pay-TV operators, although ownership and digital distribution rights will remain with the league.

WSJ

August 6, 1945: American bomber drops atomic bomb on Hiroshima

Let's all reflect …on Hiroshima and how we (too) may disappear very shortly from the register of technological civilizations that have, it is assumed, flickered on and off across the universe ... off as in they destroyed themselves and disappeared into the great silence:

In my hand is a relic of the birth of the nuclear age, a bit of Trinitite that my wife, Kim, bought at a rock shop in New Mexico near Alamogordo. Yes, it’s legal to possess because it was gathered from the site decades ago, and no, it’s no longer dangerously radioactive. Why did she want it? Because she gathers information of all kinds — books, objects, experiences — that will help her understand the beauty and darkness of the world. The Trinitite sample cost a few bucks and is only mildly radioactive. It’s about the size of a peanut, is greenish black, and weighs about the same as the albatross in the Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner.

Trinitite is among the artifacts that were to be included in the Library of the Great Silence, a catalog of objects representing transitions and periods of existential threat. The project was part of the SETI Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to the search for intelligent life beyond earth. The library is a response, in part, to the Fermi Paradox. Posed by physicist Enrico Fermi, the paradox asks why, given how vast and old the universe is, we haven’t found evidence of other communicative technological civilizations?

I won’t bore you with the math behind the Drake Equation, which seeks to estimate how many intelligent worlds there might be out there, except to cite the most important variable, L. That stands for the average lifespan of technological civilizations. One explanation for the great silence is that civilizations have a tendency to destroy themselves. Nobody knows what L might be, because we have a lack of observable data, but our current estimate is at least 80 years.

If we are not to fall into the great silence, we must learn to do a better job of passing on the lessons of the past.

Max McCoy, Kansas Reflector

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Sources

1. https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-tariffs-economy-impact-2b07ab4f?mod=hp_lead_pos4
2. https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/detroit-rediscovers-its-love-for-giant-gas-guzzlers-f51d7a7d?mod=hp_lead_pos10
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2025/08/04/neanderthal-human-brain-chemistry-difference/
4. https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/08/05/jim-acosta-joaquin-oliver-parkland-ai/
5. https://www.wsj.com/business/media/the-nfl-is-taking-a-10-stake-in-disneys-espn-158acff5?st=qvBeLw&reflink=article_copyURL_share

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