Andrew here. This just in: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will join us at this year’s DealBook Summit on Dec. 3. He has been at the center of virtually all of the major policy decisions of the moment, and we will discuss everything from the geopolitical implications of tariffs to the use of economic tools as part of national security to the future of the Fed — and more.
We’ll announce the full lineup of speakers in the coming weeks. For more information on attending in person, please click here.
The H-1B chaos
It was a weekend of chaos for corporate America, as companies rushed to protect thousands of employees in the U.S. on H-1B visas after sudden policy changes by the Trump administration.
The White House may have cleared up some of the confusion. But the episode again underscores the speed of policy changes under President Trump — with potentially big business and geopolitical consequences.
The scene: Many employers scrambled to get H-1B holders back to the country from abroad before the new rules took effect just after midnight on Sunday, offering to help them book flights if needed.
Microsoft told employees that holders should stay in the U.S. “for the foreseeable future.”
The Trump administration took a while to clear the air. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick suggested on Friday that the plan to add a $100,000 fee would apply to existing visa holders. (Previously, employers had to pay a $780 filing fee and a $215 for the visa lottery.)
By Saturday, White House officials clarified that the changes would apply only to new applications, not renewals, and that they would “not impact the ability of any current visa holder to travel to/from the U.S.”
The H-1B program has been in some Trump allies’ sights for years. Companies have long used such visas to bring in highly skilled workers like engineers. But figures like Steve Bannon have criticized them, saying they allow companies to hire lower-cost foreign workers instead of Americans.
Administration officials made clear that the status quo can’t stand: “This common-sense action does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down wages,” a White House spokeswoman said in a statement.
Some in Corporate America remain worried:
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“There is not a single company that I have invested in the last 10 years that could afford to pay this,” Alan Patricof, the venture capitalist, told The Times.
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“We’re concerned about the impact on employees, their families and American employers,” Matt Letourneau, a spokesman for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a statement.
Not everyone feels the same: Reid Hoffman, the venture capitalist and Democratic donor, said the higher fee was a “great solution,” since it would mean the visas would be given only for “very high value jobs” and reduced the need for a lottery.
And the move could further strain U.S.-India relations. About 70 percent of H-1B holders are Indian citizens, who are allowed to bring their immediate family in a related program. Shares in Indian tech outsourcing companies like Tata Consultancy Services and Infosys, which are big users of the program, dropped around 3 percent on Monday.
India has already protested a 50 percent levy imposed by Trump on Indian exports, citing the country’s purchases of Russian oil. This move doesn’t help: A statement from India’s Ministry of External Affairs posted on X said that the measure was “likely to have humanitarian consequences by way of the disruption caused for families.”
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Murdochs may join TikTok investors. President Trump told Fox News that Rupert Murdoch and his son Lachlan, the C.E.O. of Fox Corporation, would “probably” be among the investors involved in a deal for control of the app from its Chinese parent, ByteDance. (That’s even as Trump is suing Rupert Murdoch and The Wall Street Journal for its recent reporting on Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.) A White House official said that Oracle would reconstruct TikTok’s underlying algorithm and store U.S. user data in a cloud it managed.
The Trump administration reportedly plans to link autism and Tylenol. Federal health officials led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health secretary, are expected to tie pregnant women’s use of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol, with an increased risk of autism in their children, according to The Washington Post. Some studies suggest a link; others have found none. Shares in Kenvue, the company that makes Tylenol, were down 5.6 percent in premarket trading.
France’s richest man says a wealth tax would destroy the economy. Bernard Arnault of LVMH slammed the proposed 2 percent tax on those worth over 100 million euros (about $118 million), and dismissed the economist most closely tied to the idea, Gabriel Zucman, as a “far-left activist” with “pseudo-academic” experience. Zucman said the tax plan had polled extremely well, and would raise €20 billion.
Google is back in court
In April, a federal judge ruled that Google illegally abused its monopoly in online advertising. Starting on Monday, Google and the Justice Department are back in court to decide what to do about it.
The hearing, which is expected to last up to three weeks, comes after Google avoided a major blow in a separate search antitrust case, in which a federal judge decided against forcing Google to divest its Chrome browser. Even if the company similarly avoids the harshest penalties in this case, a pile-on of civil antitrust lawsuits could force it to change its business, reports Marty Swant.
What’s at stake: The government has asked the judge to force Google to divest AdX, its flagship ad exchange for open-web display ads, and ban the company from re-entering the market for 10 years, among other remedies. Google says that “would cause economic chaos and technological dysfunction resulting in harm to millions of advertisers and publishers.” Both proposals include a range of changes to Google’s tech stack, like allowing rivals to gain access to real-time bids.
While the government is “swinging for the fences,” Google is taking a “very, very minimalist approach,” said Roger Alford, a law professor at the University of Notre Dame who until recently was part of the Justice Department’s antitrust division.
A government win could shake up the ad industry. As recently as 2022, Google controlled around 90 percent of the publisher ad server market, according to the court’s opinion from April.
Changes could lead to cheaper ads for advertisers and broader access to ad inventory across the open web.
This won’t be the end of Google’s antitrust woes. Ad tech rivals are piling on with new antitrust lawsuits. OpenX, PubMatic and Magnite have filed complaints that build on the agency’s case. Another antitrust lawsuit, filed this month by Penske Media, claims that Google illegally used publishers’ content without permission to power its A.I.-generated search summaries.
“While private lawsuits don’t have the force of structural remedies, they challenge Google’s position that breaking up its business would disproportionately impact businesses that rely on its integrated tools,” said Andrew Frank, a marketing analyst at Gartner.
One big difference from the search case: “A.I. is being viewed as an alternative to search,” Alford told DealBook, adding that this helped Google argue it had competition in search. “You would not say A.I. is viewed as an alternative to the auctioning of advertising on internet displays.”
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A federal court trial against Amazon is set to begin this week in Seattle. The F.T.C. has accused the tech giant of making it too difficult for customers to cancel their Prime membership subscriptions.
Mamdani’s Big Tech support
One of the more striking aspects of Zohran Mamdani’s run for New York mayor is his solid support from young, high-earning voters.
It’s especially evident in one industry sector, Niko Gallogly and Bianca Pallaro of The Times report. “To the extent that Zohran’s campaign was about breaking the mold, that is obviously culturally well aligned with the tech sector,” said Julie Samuels, the C.E.O. and president of Tech:NYC, which co-hosted a closed-door meeting in July between tech executives and Mamdani.
The Times broke down the numbers. Mamdani holds a significant lead over opponents in individual campaign contributions since the Democratic primary in June, according to campaign finance data collected through Aug. 18.
More Google employees donated to Mamdani than those at any other private company in the city. At least 238 contributed a total of $45,823 to his primary and general election campaigns. (Employees at Meta, Amazon, Spotify and Microsoft were also a force in Mamdani donations.) By contrast, four Google employees contributed to Mayor Eric Adams’s re-election efforts, eight to that of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, and one to the Republican, Curtis Sliwa.
Mamdani has raised nearly $3.6 million from individual donors across more than 10,000 different employers, the Times analysis showed. (Overall, his campaign has raised millions more.) Of those, donations from tech sector employees far outpaced those of other business sectors, including finance.
Global view
Climate Week by the numbers
Climate Week NYC kicks off on the sidelines of the U.N. General Assembly in New York, with investors, environmentalists and world leaders trying to pressure countries and companies to stick to environmental commitments.
The event, sponsored by the likes of KPMG and Microsoft, offers a split-screen alternative to President Trump’s climate rollbacks, and to businesses that have downgraded climate targets.
Companies risk falling behind if they don’t join the climate fight. “It is about unlocking growth, creating jobs and securing our future,” organizers say.
New data and dispatches have refocused attention on the issue:
Climate politics is a heated left-right issue outside the U.S., too. Take Australia, where Matt Canavan, a senator of the right-wing National Party, told Sky News that the government’s plan to phase out diesel and petroleum and invest in alternative fuels in response to natural disasters like wildfires and floods was foolhardy. “If we focus on trying to solve global problems that we have no control over, we will keep going down,” Canavan said.
Climate-related health care costs are soaring. This summer’s heat wave in Europe led to an additional 16,500 deaths “estimated to be attributable to human-induced climate change,” according to recent data from Imperial College London and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The scientists warned of more lethal summers ahead.
Heat waves could cut U.S. GDP by 0.6 percentage points this year, according to a recent report from Allianz Research. Tariffs, by contrast, are expected to lower U.S. G.D.P. by 0.5 points this year and next, according to the Budget Lab at Yale.
Could climate change redraw the global wine map? As summer temperatures have increased about 1 degree Celsius since 1990, farmers in northern Germany — on the same latitude as southern Alaska — are ripping out grain crops and planting vines; industry representatives say about 20 new wineries have opened in the state of Lower Saxony in recent years. “It was only made possible by climate change,” Jan Brinkmann, the head of the state’s winemakers association, told Agence France-Presse.
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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Berkshire Hathaway has sold all of its shares in the Chinese E.V. maker BYD, a highly profitable trade conceived by Charlie Munger 17 years ago. (CNBC)
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Pfizer is said to be nearing a deal to buy the anti-obesity drug developer Metsera for $7.3 billion, potentially gaining a foothold in the weight-loss market. (FT)
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“Saks in Talks to Sell 49% of Bergdorf Goodman for About $1 Billion” (WSJ)
Politics, policy and regulation
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The billionaire donor George Soros gave $10 million to Gov. Gavin Newsom’s campaign to redistrict California. (Politico)
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“E.U. to block Big Tech from new financial data sharing system” (FT)
Best of the rest
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“The Waldorf’s Makeover Went a Billion Over Budget — and China Is Footing the Bill” (WSJ)
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China could beat the U.S. to the moon because SpaceX’s lunar lander is years away from being ready, former NASA executives said. (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 reporter, covering business for the DealBook newsletter.
Bianca Pallaro is a Times reporter who combines traditional reporting with data analysis skills to investigate wrongdoing and explain complex issues by turning numbers into insightful information.
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