Andrew here. There’s a fascinating new conversation happening among C.E.O.s and Wall Street firms: Some of the biggest American companies getting hit by President Trump’s tariffs are being pitched to sell their rights to a refund, which would be especially lucrative if the Supreme Court ultimately decides to reverse the levies.
Financiers are offering to buy the refund rights for cents on the dollar — and, given the costs and uncertainty of the legal fights in challenging the tariffs, many companies are considering those proposals. My colleague Bernhard Warner has a detailed breakdown. What do you think? Would you sell your refund rights up front now in exchange for cash? Let us know.
The tariff refund trade
President Trump on Wednesday sought to defend his expansive trade war by appealing to the Supreme Court.
But that hasn’t deterred Wall Street firms from a buzzy — if perhaps long-shot — trade that effectively bets against the survival of his tariffs.
The transaction revolves around tariff refund rights. Companies can challenge what they pay in import duties if they believe that the levies were unlawful. That means importers could collect windfalls if the Supreme Court upholds lower court decisions that most of the tariffs are unconstitutional. (How big? The government collected nearly $30 billion in July alone.)
Importers could also seek refunds if they think that they were erroneously charged.
Financial firms have made a proposition to importers: They would buy companies’ legal claims over refund rights.
“We have a lot of clients asking about it,” Lenny Feldman, a managing partner of Sandler, Travis & Rosenberg, a law firm specializing in international trade, told DealBook. (His firm is not involved in such transactions.)
For importers, selling refund rights is a potential way to cushion tariff losses, even if some offers have been valued at pennies on the dollar. DealBook hears that large U.S. companies are among those weighing such proposals.
The trade gained attention in July, when Wired reported that it had seen a pitch letter from Cantor Fitzgerald, the Wall Street brokerage once led by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and is now helmed by Brandon Lutnick, one of his sons. Cantor was willing to buy the rights to a company’s claim and pay 20 to 30 percent of whatever it recovered, according to Wired.
That caught the attention of Democratic lawmakers. Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Ron Wyden of Oregon sent a letter to Cantor, seeking more detail and saying that Congress had “a strong interest in oversight of these reported deals.”
Erica Chase, a Cantor spokeswoman, declined to comment, but pointed DealBook to a Bloomberg report last month in which she was quoted as saying, “We have not facilitated or executed any trades in that market.” The same article reported, citing unnamed sources, that the company had held internal discussions about participating in these kinds of transactions, but decided against it.
Interest in these kinds of trades has grown, especially after the federal appeals court decision last week. Still, companies face long odds, and Trump has expressed confidence that the Supreme Court will ultimately rule in his administrator’s favor. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has warned of “catastrophic” economic consequences if the tariffs were overturned.
Feldman noted that the long-shot nature of the trade was reflected in its pricing terms; buyers of refund rights are often offering sellers just a sliver of what the companies would be able to recoup from a successful claim.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Trump administration’s cancellation of Harvard funding is ruled illegal. Judge Allison Burroughs of the U.S. District Court in Boston agreed with the university’s claim that the government had compromised its First Amendment and due process rights when it sought to freeze billions of dollars in research funds in the name of fighting antisemitism. The ruling, which the White House condemned, could give Harvard leverage in settlement talks with the administration.
President Trump’s Fed pick is expected to face scrutiny in the Senate. Stephen Miran, who was most recently a top presidential economic adviser, said in prepared remarks that he would uphold the central bank’s independence if he is confirmed to temporarily serve on its Board of Governors. But Senator Thom Tillis, the departing Republican of North Carolina, said he wouldn’t consider any choice to replace Lisa Cook, the Fed governor whom Trump is seeking to fire, until her lawsuit over efforts to dismiss her was resolved.
Trump advisers weigh moves to persuade New York mayoral candidates to quit. People close to the president have discussed the possibility of giving Mayor Eric Adams or Curtis Sliwa, a Republican, jobs in the administration if they drop out of the race, The Times reports. Any such moves would be meant to help Andrew Cuomo’s chances against Zohran Mamdani, the democratic socialist and Democratic nominee who is generally leading in polls.
Apple is reportedly developing an A.I.-powered web search tool. Apple reached an agreement with Google this week to evaluate and test a Google-built artificial intelligence model for use in what some are calling an “answer engine” for its Siri voice assistant, Bloomberg reports. The tool could help Apple’s digital assistant catch up with popular A.I. tools like Perplexity and OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Accusations of trade secrets theft in the A.I. race
Scale AI, the big artificial intelligence training start-up, has been in the news lately more for executive moves like the departure of Alexandr Wang, its co-founder, for Meta, amid a battle for A.I. talent.
But Scale AI is putting up a fight over another former employee, accusing him of stealing confidential strategy documents and poaching a customer for the benefit of Mercor, a rival, Michael de la Merced reports.
The accusations: Scale AI wrote in its lawsuit, filed in San Francisco federal court, that the former employee, Eugene Ling, once one of its top customer relationship executives, began interviewing with rivals in June. He eventually held talks with Mercor, which was particularly interested in poaching an unnamed large Scale AI customer, referred to in documents as “Customer A.”
The day after meeting with Mercor’s C.E.O., Ling began downloading confidential Scale AI documents regarding Customer A, according to the lawsuit. While still working for Scale AI, he pitched an employee of Customer A on switching to Mercor. (The company eventually did move to Mercor.)
Scale AI also accused Ling of illicitly downloading confidential documents related to other customers, including those outside his responsibilities. On July 18, his last day at Scale AI, he asked for documents related to “Customer C,” to which a colleague responded, “What is this, some last day shenanigans?”
The lawsuit also accuses Ling of introducing other Scale AI employees to Mercor, with some having since jumped ship.
Scale AI began investigating Ling in late July, and approached Mercor in early August about its findings, according to the lawsuit. On Aug. 18, Mercor confirmed that Ling had downloaded proprietary information. Ling’s lawyer has since admitted that his client had taken the documents and continues to possess them, according to Scale AI.
“Sadly, in our industry there are players more willing to steal trade secrets than invest the time and resources required to build their own position in the market,” Tom Channick, a spokesman for Scale AI, told DealBook.
Mercor’s response to DealBook, from Surya Midha, a co-founder:
While Mercor has hired many people who departed Scale, we have no interest in any of Scale’s trade secrets and in fact are intentionally running our business in a different way. Eugene informed us that he had old documents in a personal Google Drive, which we have never accessed and are now investigating. We reached out to Scale six days ago offering to have Eugene destroy the files or reach a different resolution, and we are now awaiting their response.
The context: The A.I. race is increasingly cutthroat, raising the stakes for any competitive weakness. Scale AI has lost business from several customers including OpenAI and reportedly Google, particularly after the company sold a 49 percent stake to Meta in June for $14.3 billion.
“I have to say I have been struck that the prominent members of the financial community have had more to say being critical of @ZohranKMamdani’s bad ideas about grocery stores in New York than they have the wholesale takeover of the @FederalReserve, which is a major threat to the financial system.”
— Larry Summers, the economist and former Treasury secretary, expresses alarm that Wall Street appears more concerned about Zohran Mamdani than they are with President Trump’s attacks on the Fed.
GE Aerospace makes a big bet on hybrid aircraft
Although investment in green tech has stalled during the Trump administration, the race to commercialize low-carbon aircraft is still on. The latest sign: GE Aerospace has made a $300 million investment in Beta Technologies, a Vermont-based electric aviation start-up, Niko Gallogly reports.
The companies aim to develop a hybrid engine to power commercial, military, cargo, medical and logistics flights. GE Aerospace’s investment in Beta brings total funding in the start-up, which was founded in 2017, to north of $1.4 billion, according to PitchBook.
Airlines are hungry to bring down fuel costs and emissions. Hybrid engines are much closer to being able to handle long-range flights than all-electric planes are, Phil Ansell, an associate professor of aerospace engineering at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, told DealBook.
That’s because the low energy density of batteries, compared with fossil fuels, means the quantity needed to power long-range flights on their own would be too heavy. “There is no real anticipation we will see all-electric aviation anytime soon beyond a couple dozen passengers and a couple hundred miles,” Ansell said.
Beta is the latest among a string of electric aviation companies, including Heart Aerospace and Joby, to deepen their focus outside all-electric flight.
Beta and GE Aerospace will collaborate on the hybrid engine. The start-up’s expertise in electric engines and GE Aerospace’s experience in gas turbine engines will create a powerful technology, said Kyle Clark, the former professional hockey player who founded Beta.
“If we take the aircraft that I was flying this morning and add hybridization to it — it just turns into a pretty amazing machine,” Clark said.
Hybrid aircraft makers face both head- and tailwinds. Venture capital investment in green tech was down 37.6 percent in 2024 from the vertical’s 2021 peak, according to PitchBook.
But President Trump has taken an interest in aircraft innovation, announcing an executive order that will help provide an expedited path to commercialization for some aircraft types that Beta and GE Aerospace aim to power.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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A Bitcoin mining company linked to the Trump family surged in a chaotic Nasdaq trading debut. Another new Trump-linked crypto project has plunged. (WSJ, Cointelegraph)
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The State Department said it was “very troubled” by Norway’s sovereign wealth fund’s move to divest its holdings in Caterpillar over the company’s business ties to Israel. (FT)
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OpenAI reportedly increased the size of its secondary share sale to $10.3 billion, allowing employees to sell about $4 billion more and valuing the company at roughly $500 billion. (CNBC)
Politics, policy and regulation
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“Why Lawmakers Don’t Want to Ban Their Own Stock Trading” (WSJ)
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Newsmax sued Fox News, arguing that its rival has illegally cornered the market for conservative TV news. (NYT)
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A Texas bill that would let people sue abortion pill prescribers and distributors involved in sending medications to the state has advanced to Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk. (NYT)
Best of the rest
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“What We Know About America’s Billionaires: 1,135 and Counting” (WSJ)
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The popular Los Angeles grocery chain Erewhon is opening up its first Manhattan location — in a West Village padel club. (Bloomberg)
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Takeshi Niinami who resigned as Suntory’s chairman over accusations that he bought a supplement that could be illegal in Japan, said he only took CBD supplements for jet lag. (NYT)
We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected].
Andrew Ross Sorkin is a columnist and the founder of DealBook, the flagship business and policy newsletter at The Times and an annual conference.
Bernhard Warner is a senior editor for DealBook, a newsletter from The Times, covering business trends, the economy and the markets.
Sarah Kessler is the weekend edition editor of the DealBook newsletter and writes features on business.
Michael J. de la Merced has covered global business and finance news for The Times since 2006.
Niko Gallogly is a Times business reporter, covering diversity and environmental and social justice efforts in corporate America. Email them at [email protected].
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