Markets around the world are meeting President Trump’s tariff drops with the composure of a grown-up in their kid’s makeshift haunted house.

Markets in Asia and Europe were in the green yesterday after Trump sent letters to 14 countries —including major trade patterns like Japan, South Korea, and Thailand—threatening tariffs of up to 40% starting on Aug. 1. Investors’ keeping calm and carrying on suggests that they might have come to view his tariff reveals as a negotiating tactic rather than a serious liability.

The S&P 500 dropped on Monday and briefly declined yesterday morning, when Trump backpedaled on his earlier suggestion that the new deadline could change. But the slight dip is far from the nosedive that global markets took following Trump’s sweeping “Liberation Day” announcement in April.

Crying wolf

Experts attribute the lack of big-market moves to a sense that there’s no concreteness to Trump’s tariff talk:

• Investors might expect the tariff deadlines to keep getting pushed back until trade deals are made, IG Group Chief Marketing Analyst Chris Beauchamp told the New York Times.
• And though countries like Japan, South Korea, and Thailand account for a significant share of US imports, the tariffs slated for next month aren’t quite as big as they seem, with electronics and pharmaceuticals exempted, per Paul Ashworth of Capital Economics.

But some analysts warned that investors might be getting complacent, as the effects of tariffs have yet to appear in economic data and there’s no guarantee that Trump’s apparent willingness to adjust trade policy in order to avoid rattling markets will continue.

The tariff bazooka kept firing…when Trump announced a 50% tariff on copper yesterday, with a TBD effective date. He also said that 200% import duties on pharmaceuticals are coming, but won’t go into effect for at least another year to give companies time to move drug production stateside.—SK

Meta poached Apple’s top AI executive. This will make the Sun Valley welcome reception a bit awkward. Ruoming Pang, who led Apple’s foundational models team and was considered the iPhone-maker’s top AI researcher, is leaving to work on Meta’s new AI “superintelligence” team, Bloomberg reported. The loss is a major blow to Apple’s already struggling AI efforts, with the company reportedly now considering outsourcing the model that powers Siri. For Meta, it’s another sign of how serious CEO Mark Zuckerberg is about competing in AI and developing robots that are smarter than humans. According to Bloomberg, Pang was offered a package worth “tens of millions” of dollars per year to defect.

Trump says the US will resume sending weapons to Ukraine. Just days after the White House announced it was pausing military aid to Ukraine while the Pentagon reviewed stockpiles, President Trump said the US would in fact restart shipments to the country to help it defend itself against Russia. The Wall Street Journal reported that Trump told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he was not the one who ordered the pause in deliveries. The reversal comes as Russia intensifies its attacks on Kyiv and Trump grows more publicly frustrated with Vladimir Putin stonewalling attempts at a ceasefire. “He’s very nice to us all the time, but it turns out to be meaningless,” Trump said this week.

The IRS will allow churches to endorse political candidates. In a reversal of a 70-year-old policy, the Internal Revenue Service said yesterday that it will permit churches to make endorsements from the pulpit without losing their tax-exempt status. Previously, the prevailing interpretation of the tax code barred houses of worship from keeping their tax-exempt status if they formally backed political candidates, although the rule was rarely enforced. A group of churches sued the IRS last year, arguing that the rule violated their constitutional rights. First Amendment advocates applauded the news, while some experts warned that it could open the door for political campaigns to funnel money through nonprofits.—AE

It turns out AI might be able to file redundantly superfluous midyear reviews, too. Middle managers, white collar roles that have already been endangered for the last few years, are now disappearing even faster, according to a new report from payroll company Gusto. And the introduction of AI could be partly to blame.

At 8,500 small businesses surveyed by Gusto, there was one manager for every six nonmanager employees on a team. That’s double the amount of direct reports from the 3-to-1 ratio it found in 2019:

• The trend of booting midlevel roles started after the pandemic hiring surge, when interest rates shot up and companies looked to cut costs.
• Most of this can be attributed to normal attrition, but manager layoffs jumped in the last two years compared to “individual contributors,” or nonmanager roles.

While most of the fears around AI replacing workers have been concentrated on entry-level roles, some studies have found that employers are more likely to automate project management tasks or even pay raise decisions, which often fall to middle managers.

Big picture: Larger companies like Amazon, Google, and Meta have announced concerted efforts to get rid of “managers managing managers, managing managers.” Earlier this month, Microsoft laid off 4% of its staff (nearly 9,000 employees from across the company), citing its aim to cut these midlevel positions while investing $80 billion in AI.—MM

The hassle of removing your shoes when going through US airport security is now a thing of the past. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced yesterday that the most annoying part of airport protocol is over.

The curtain unofficially fell on 20+ years of security policy on Monday at select airports, although shoes will still have to be removed if you’re chosen for additional screening.

Why now? Gate Access, which broke the news last week, said it’s political. Some elected officials have long expressed displeasure with the TSA; a recent bill from two Republican senators calls for the abolishment of the organization.

Shoe timeline: A few months after 9/11, Richard Reid (the shoe bomber) tried and failed to detonate an explosive device in his shoes on a flight from Paris to Miami. Five years later, the TSA made it mandatory for flyers to remove their footwear at all airport security checkpoints. TSA PreCheck was launched in 2013, allowing passengers to leave their shoes on if they paid $85 for five years of expedited screening.

Sole purpose: Since shoe bombs are considered a very unlikely threat, the change could free TSA agents to be more alert for other suspicious activity.—DL

The paychecks people are going to lose on roulette at the Times Square casino after enduring dinner at Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. will quickly add up for the house. The projected revenue for the first full-fledged casinos in NYC is on par with—or even more than—the most lucrative ones in the world, Bloomberg reported:

• A casino proposed in Times Square by Caesar’s Entertainment will generate $23.3 billion over 10 years, according to the company.
• Freedom Plaza, a project in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood, is expected to generate $2.2 billion in annual revenue its first year and then a monster $4.2 billion after a decade, per estimates.

By comparison, the two Wynn Resorts Las Vegas casinos generated a combined $2.6 billion in revenue last year.

There is one caveat. Casino bidders tend to overestimate revenue projections—perhaps not surprising for an industry predicated on exaggerating how much money you have. The proposals still need to be approved by officials, with the winners expected to be announced by December.—AE