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Chip giant Nvidia is set to release its latest earnings report – and the results could move the entire US stock market.

Over the past two years, the chipmaker has risen to become the world’s most valuable company, with a market capitalisation of more than $4 trillion.

When Nvidia announces its earnings on Wednesday, investors will get to see how the tech giant has been faring amid the tumult of President Donald Trump’s trade salvoes and concerns about whether artificial intelligence has been overhyped.

Why is Nvidia so important?

Nvidia specialises in making the graphics processing units (GPUs) that power AI, including the Blackwell B200, marketed as the world’s most powerful chip.

The California-based company’s chips have become essential to the world’s largest tech companies, including Microsoft, Meta, Amazon and Alphabet, since AI exploded into the mainstream with the release of OpenAI’s generative AI chatbot, ChatGPT, in November 2022.

The company’s portfolio also includes data centres and gaming.

Nvidia posted annual revenue of $130.5bn for the last fiscal year, which ended in late January.

What will the market be looking for in Nvidia’s earnings report?

Analysts will be examining various metrics, including the company’s quarterly revenue.

Nvidia’s revenue has been growing at breakneck speed for the past several years, thanks to the AI boom and the surge in demand for its chips.

Nvidia posted triple-digit revenue growth for five straight quarters between mid-2023 and 2024, according to company filings.

Since then, annual revenue growth has coasted in the high double digits.

Last quarter, the company reported revenue of $44.1bn, a 69 percent increase from the same period a year ago.

While such figures would be the envy of any company, the firm’s explosive performance has also raised questions about how long its stellar run can last.

In advance of its forthcoming earnings report – which covers the second quarter of fiscal year 2026 – Nvidia has said it expects revenue of $45bn plus or minus 2 percent.

Analysts have predicted revenue of up to $46bn, or 53 percent growth year-on-year.

The earnings report is also expected to show signs of whiplash from the Trump administration’s tariff war.

In April, Trump banned Nvidia from selling its H20 chip – specially designed for the Chinese market – to China. At the time, Nvidia said the ban would cost the company $8bn.

Trump later walked back the ban when Nvidia agreed to share 15 percent of its H20 chip sales with the US government, a deal that was finalised on August 11, two weeks after the end of its second quarter.

Why is there worry that AI is overhyped?

As Silicon Valley pours billions into AI, some observers, such as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, have questioned whether there is a bubble.

“Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is, yes,” Altman told The Verge in an interview earlier this month.

He is not the only one who is worried.

Analysts have drawn parallels to the collapse of the “Nifty Fifty” in the 1970s, said Arun Sai, senior multi-asset strategist at Pictet Asset Management in the United Kingdom.

The Nifty Fifty was a group of 50 of the most valuable companies in the US, including Xerox and IBM.

Though highly profitable, the firms became highly overvalued in the late 1960s and early 70s.

When the bubble burst following the 1973-74 stock market crash, the value of Nifty Fifty stocks fell by more than 50 percent.

“They were fantastic companies, but they were trading on the wrong price,” Sai told Al Jazeera.

“This is the old notion of you could be a great company, but not a great stock if the price is wrong.”

What’s up with the Magnificent Seven?

Five decades later, some investors are asking whether the “Magnificent Seven” – Nvidia, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Tesla – could be overvalued as well.

Valuations have soared into the trillions of dollars on the back of the AI boom, although there is some divergence within the group, with Apple and Tesla faring less well recently.

Amazon recently said it expects to spend $85bn on AI over the next year, while Microsoft predicts it will spend $100bn.

AI has been one of the few bright spots in an otherwise slowing economy that has been undergoing upheaval since Trump took office.

“Growth is dwindling in other sectors, but there is this very small, niche, concentrated pocket of hyper growth,” Sai said. “This suddenly becomes a much bigger contributor to US GDP growth than it would have been in a normal phase of the cycle.”

Corporate spending on AI has been likened to an arms race, but tech giants – and Nvidia customers – will also sooner or later need to show investors that their betting on the sector will lead to profits.

US tech giants are already facing challenges from companies like China’s DeepSeek, which made global headlines in January when it unveiled a powerful but much cheaper AI model.

So far, innovation does not appear to be translating into higher returns.

In a recent survey by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), 95 percent of enterprises looked at reported no return on their AI investments despite the billions ploughed into the sector.

How much could Nvidia’s latest earnings move the market?

Because of its sky-high valuation, Nvidia alone makes up almost 8 percent of the S&P500 – the benchmark index of 500 top companies listed on the US stock market.

That means Nvidia’s earnings have the potential to have a significant impact, good or bad, on the stock market as a whole.

Big movements in Nvidia’s stock price have triggered swings in the S&P 500 of 1 percent or more in the past.

After Nvidia’s earnings results in February sent its share price down more than 8 percent, the S&P 500 fell 1.6 percent.

Cracker Barrel, the US restaurant chain known for its southern-style cuisine, has abandoned a controversial rebrand following a backlash stoked by prominent right-wing figures including Donald Trump.

The Lebanon, Tennessee-based chain said on Tuesday that it would bring back its decades-old logo after its announcement of a simplified design provoked a firestorm of criticism online.

“We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain,” the company said in a statement.

“At Cracker Barrel, it’s always been – and always will be – about serving up delicious food, warm welcomes, and the kind of country hospitality that feels like family. As a proud American institution, our 70,000 hardworking employees look forward to welcoming you to our table soon.”

Cracker Barrel, which has more than 600 stores across the US, last week unveiled a new logo as part of the “fifth evolution” of its brand, ditching the image of a seated man leaning against a barrel in favour of a simplified, text-only design.

The redesign prompted a swift backlash in right-wing circles, with some commentators claiming the company had gone “woke” – a term used by conservatives to mock what they see as an excessive fixation on racial and gender diversity.

Shares in Cracker Barrel, which had fallen sharply amid the backlash, rose more than 7 percent in after-hours trading following the reversal.

Weighing in on the furore shortly before Cracker Barrel’s announcement on Tuesday, Trump called on the company to revert to its old logo and “admit a mistake”.

“They got a Billion Dollars worth of free publicity if they play their cards right. Very tricky to do, but a great opportunity,” the US president wrote on his platform Truth Social.

Following Cracker Barrel’s U-turn, Trump congratulated the chain on the change.

“All of your fans very much appreciate it,” Trump wrote on Truth Social.

“Good luck into the future. Make lots of money and, most importantly, make your customers happy again!”

Since returning to the White House in January, Trump has used the presidency to exert an extraordinary level of influence over private businesses.

Trump last week announced that the US government had taken a 10 percent stake in Intel, days after confirming that chip giants Nvidia and AMD had agreed to pay 15 percent of revenues from chip sales in China into Washington’s coffers.

Last month, Coca-Cola announced that it would release a version of its signature drink made with cane sugar in the US after Trump claimed to have persuaded the company to start using the sweetener in favour of high-fructose corn syrup.

Americans are more pessimistic about the state of the United States economy after a weak jobs report showed cracks in the labour market.

The Conference Board said on Tuesday that its consumer confidence index fell to 97.4 this month from an upwardly revised 98.7 in July.

“Notably, consumers’ appraisal of current job availability declined for the eighth consecutive month,” said Stephanie Guichard, senior economist of global indicators at the Conference Board.

“Meanwhile, pessimism about future job availability inched up, and optimism about future income faded slightly.”

Consumers are worried about their income. The measure that showed short-term expectations of business conditions fell by 1.2 points to 74.8. The marker that usually signals a looming recession is 80.

Labour market fuels downturn

While unemployment and layoffs remain historically low, there has been a noticeable deterioration in the labour market this year with mounting evidence that people are having difficulty finding jobs.

US employers added 73,000 jobs in July, well short of the 115,000 analysts had expected. Worse, revisions by the Bureau of Labor Statistics to its May and June figures shaved 258,000 jobs off previous estimates, and the unemployment rate ticked up to 4.2 percent from 4.1 percent.

Another government report showed US employers posted 7.4 million job vacancies in June, down from 7.7 million in May. The number of people quitting their jobs – a sign of confidence in their prospects elsewhere – also fell.

More jobs data will come out next week when the government releases its August job gains and June job openings reports.

The Conference Board said the survey of consumers it uses to calculate its consumer confidence index found references to high prices and inflation increased again and were often mentioned in tandem with tariffs.

Other government data this month showed that while prices at the consumer level held fairly steady from June to July, US wholesale inflation surged unexpectedly last month.

President Donald Trump’s sweeping taxes on imports are also pushing costs up for consumers.

The share of consumers expecting a recession over the next year rose in August to the highest level since April when Trump’s tariff rollout began, the Conference Board said.

The share of survey respondents who said they intended to buy a car in the near future rose while those planning to buy a home remained stable after July’s decline.

The number of consumers saying they planned to buy big-ticket items, such as appliances, fell, but there were significant variations among product categories. Respondents who said they planned to take a vacation soon, either inside the US or abroad, also declined.

United States President Donald Trump has said he will fire Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook over unproven claims of mortgage fraud, an unprecedented step which could test the boundaries of presidential power over the central bank’s independence.

In a letter posted on social media on Monday, Trump told Cook he has “sufficient cause to remove you from your position”. Trump claims that Cook misleadingly indicated that she intended to live in two homes as her primary residence in 2021.

Cook, appointed to the Federal Reserve (or Fed) board in 2022 by former President Joe Biden, has yet to provide a detailed account of the transactions since the matter was raised by the Federal Housing Finance Agency last week.

Trump’s letter, which has escalated his fight to control the Fed, spooked financial markets. Both the US dollar and long-dated treasuries fell on Tuesday. The president has made little secret of his desire for the US central bank to spur growth by lowering interest rates.

So, why is Trump intensifying his attacks on the Fed, and how will it affect the independence of the central bank?

What has Trump said against the Fed governor?

In the letter, Trump said Cook had falsified her bank records to obtain favourable mortgage terms before joining the Fed. He accused her of “deceitful and criminal conduct in a financial matter” and said he did not have confidence in her “integrity”.

“At a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator,” he added, claiming authority to dismiss Cook under Article 2 of the US Constitution.

Last Friday, Trump threatened to fire Cook – a former professor of economics at Michigan State University and the first African American woman to serve on the Fed board – if she did not resign.

But Cook has been defiant about staying on: “I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet,” Cook said in a statement on August 20.

“I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve, and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts,” she said.

Trump’s latest salvo comes amid repeated attacks on the Fed’s chair, Jerome Powell, for not cutting the interest rate fast enough. Trump has even threatened to fire Powell, who has previously warned that the president’s trade tariffs will push up prices for US consumers.

Does Trump’s latest move constitute an attack on the integrity of the Fed?

While the employment terms of Fed governors are designed to outlast the tenure of any particular president, the Federal Reserve Act does allow for the removal of a sitting governor “for cause”. Cook’s term is currently set to last until 2038.

The forceful removal of a governor has never been tested by US presidents who, particularly since the 1970s, have taken a “hands-off” approach to Fed matters as a way to ensure confidence in US monetary policy.

The ability of the Fed to set interest rates, which affect the cost of borrowing for consumers and businesses, without being subject to interference from Washington is widely considered a key tenet of trust in the US economy.

Before any decision on Cook’s future, financial market participants say Trump’s attack will raise questions about the future of the Fed, and whether or not it will become susceptible to ill-advised policy recommendations from the White House.

For Karsten Junius, chief economist at Bank J Safra Sarasin, “political interference will make monetary policy decisions less efficient and credible.” He told Al Jazeera that would “make it more difficult to fight inflation”.

Junius also noted that efforts by Washington to affect monetary policy would have a “negative effect on bond markets… It would create greater uncertainty and lead to higher long-term borrowing costs [for the US government].”

Bonds are essentially loans made by investors to the US government, to be repaid with interest over time. They have long been considered one of the safest assets in the world because the risk of Washington failing to repay its investors is very low – though Trump is changing that.

How is the Fed organised?

US monetary policy decisions are made by the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC), consisting of seven members of the Board of Governors – appointed by the president – plus a rotating group of 5 presidents from the 12 regional banks.

The president of the New York Fed has a permanent voting seat, reflecting the city’s financial clout. The other four voting seats rotate annually among the remaining 11 regional bank presidents, ensuring that different parts of the country have a voice in policy discussions.

This structure balances national oversight from Washington with regional input from across the US, aiming to create a monetary policy that reflects both national and regional economic realities and interests.

If Trump succeeds in removing Cook, it would give him an opportunity to secure a four-person majority on the Fed’s Board of Governors, helping him to exert more control over monetary policy – namely by lowering interest rates.

What will happen next?

In a hotly anticipated speech last Friday at the Fed’s annual economic summit in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell sent his strongest signal yet that the Fed would soon begin to lower interest rates, stating that “balance of risks may warrant adjusting our policy stance.”

So far this year, the Fed has held interest rates steady in the 4.25-4.5 percent range, following a 1-point percentage cut in 2024. But Powell’s suggested policy pivot is aimed at preventing the US labour market from softening further.

Monthly jobs growth has slowed this summer, with the world’s largest economy adding just 73,000 jobs in July. From May to July, there were 106,000 new entrants in the labour market, marking a significant drop from the 380,000 added in the previous three months.

In response to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ latest data release, Trump said on August 1: “Too Little, Too Late. Jerome ‘Too Late’ Powell is a disaster. DROP THE RATE! The good news is that Tariffs are bringing Billions of Dollars into the USA!”

Days later, he fired statistics commissioner Erika McEntarfer, accusing her agency of “faking” employment figures, raising fears over the integrity of official US data.

For his part, Powell has indicated that a sharp drop in rates is unlikely at the next FOMC meeting in September, due to lingering concerns about the inflationary effects of Trump’s tariff policies, which will raise import costs in the US.

The Fed chair now faces a tough balancing act in trying to achieve stable inflation and strengthen the labour market. That clash has led to a fierce debate among Fed governors about the best path forward for US monetary policy.

Two Trump-appointed policymakers, Michelle Bowman and Christopher Waller, split with Powell at the last FOMC meeting in July by supporting a quarter-point cut in interest rates. Instead, rates were kept steady.

For now, Powell faces an uphill battle to forge a consensus about how much to loosen monetary policy in his remaining meetings as chair – which expires next May.

Janius Karsten says, “I expect more of a Trump loyalist to replace Powell next year.”

He said that could “pose a risk to constructive discussions at the Fed. In the event Trump nominates an outsider, or a non-traditional central banker, then things could get bumpy. That may prove an experiment in monetary policy.”

United States President Donald Trump has ordered the removal of Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook amid unproven claims of mortgage fraud, an unprecedented move that immediately raised fears for the central bank’s independence.

In a letter posted on social media on Monday night, Trump said Cook, one of the seven members of the Fed’s Board of Governors, was being sacked “effective immediately” in accordance with his powers under the US Constitution and the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.

Citing claims aired last week by the US federal mortgage regulator, Trump said there was “sufficient reason to believe you may have made false statements on one or more mortgage agreements”.

“The Federal Reserve has tremendous responsibility for setting interest rates and regulating reserve and member banks,” Trump said in the letter, which was shared on his platform, Truth Social.

“The American people must be able to have full confidence in the honesty of the members entrusted with setting policy and overseeing the Federal Reserve. In light of your deceitful and potentially criminal conduct in a financial matter, they cannot and I do not have such confidence in your integrity.

“At a minimum, the conduct at issue exhibits the sort of gross negligence in financial transactions that calls into question your competence and trustworthiness as a financial regulator,” Trump said.

Trump had on Friday threatened to fire Cook, a former Michigan State University professor who was appointed by former President Joe Biden, if she did not resign.

In a statement responding to Trump’s letter, Cook said she would not resign.

“President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” Cook said, adding that she would continue to carry out her duties “to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022”.

A spokesperson for the Federal Reserve declined to comment.

Trump’s extraordinary move is set to accentuate concerns about the independence of the US central bank, which has been under intense pressure from the president to lower interest rates.

The ability of the Fed to set interest rates, which affect the cost of borrowing for consumers and businesses, without being subject to political interference is widely considered a key plank of confidence in the US economy.

Trump has repeatedly assailed Fed chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May, and the board for not moving faster to lower borrowing costs, arguing that their fears that his tariffs could lead to runaway inflation are overblown.

If Trump is successful in removing Cook, the board will be left with two vacancies, following the resignation of Governor Adriana Kugle earlier this month.

That would give Trump the opportunity to fill the board with a majority of his appointees.

Futures for the benchmark S&P 500 stock market index, which are traded outside of regular market hours, dipped about 0.2 percent following Trump’s announcement.

Gold, a traditional safe-haven asset during periods of stock market volatility, strengthened slightly.

Investors are now facing the reality that “the latitude of the Fed to conduct monetary policy in relentless pursuit of price stability and maximum employment may not be as great as they thought yesterday,” David Wilcox, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who served on the staff of the Federal Reserve Board, told Al Jazeera.

“The damage done to confidence in the US system will not be easily or quickly repaired,” Wilcox said.

Mark Spindel, the founder of Potomac River Capital and a historian of the Fed, cast Trump’s move as being in line with his “aggressive attempts” to take control of the US central bank.

“With a majority of the board, there’s wide latitude to reorganise the system, including possibly switching district bank presidents, who vote on the Federal Open Market Committee,” Spindel told Al Jazeera, referring to the central bank’s committee for setting monetary policy, which includes four of eleven regional reserve bank heads in addition to the seven governors.

Trump’s ordering of Cook’s removal sets the stage for a potentially protracted legal challenge.

Under the Federal Reserve Act and US Supreme Court precedent, the president must demonstrate “cause”, widely interpreted to mean malfeasance, to fire any of the central bank’s seven governors.

“In all likelihood – because of the stakes involved and the absence of relevant case law in this area – it will be challenged in court,” Wilcox said.

“Unfortunately, that process will probably be lengthy, perhaps running for many months.”

In a letter addressed to US Attorney General Pam Bondi and Department of Justice official Ed Martin earlier this month, Federal Housing Finance Agency director Bill Pulte, a staunch Trump ally, alleged that Cook had listed two properties – in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and Atlanta, Georgia – as her primary home addresses.

In the letter, which was shared on social media, Pulte said Cook appeared to have “falsified bank documents and property records to acquire more favourable loan terms, potentially committing mortgage fraud under the criminal statute”.

Mortgage loans for primary residences typically have lower interest rates as they are considered lower risk than those for investment properties.

Cook, the first African American woman to serve on the board, has not been charged with any wrongdoing or convicted of a crime.

In response to Pulte’s letter, Cook said last week that she would gather information about her financial history “to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts”, but that she had “no intention of being bullied to step down”.

The administration of United States President Donald Trump is considering taking a stake in domestic defence contractors, including the aerospace company Lockheed Martin.

On Tuesday, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick hinted at the administration making a possible investment in the company as he defended Trump’s push for a greater role in business.

“They’re thinking about it,” Lutnick told the news outlet CNBC when asked if the administration was considering taking pieces of contractors such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing or Palantir Technologies.

While Lutnick cited Pentagon leaders as the source of his information, he also indicated that deals were far from being finalised.

“There’s a lot of talking that needs to be had about, how do we finance our munitions acquisitions?” Lutnick said.

Still, he argued that some private businesses were extensions of the US government. “There’s a monstrous discussion about defence,” he explained. “Lockheed Martin makes 97 percent of their revenue from the US government. They are basically an arm of the US government.”

Lutnick’s statements come on the heels of the Trump administration announcing last week that it had taken a 10 percent stake in the struggling semiconductor chip giant Intel.

Since taking office for a second term, Trump has sought to increase US investments in several key industries, from steel to technology, prompting questions about whether Republicans were drifting from the “small government” platform they are often associated with.

Lockheed Martin, whose shares rose 1.6 percent following the remarks, responded to Lutnick’s comments by saying, “We are continuing our strong working relationship with President Trump and his Administration to strengthen our national defense.”

Boeing declined to comment, while Palantir did not respond to a request for comment. Boeing’s stock was up 2.8 percent. Meanwhile, Palantir reversed a small initial slide of about 1 percent following the remarks, and by midday, was trading up at 1.4 percent.

Lutnick’s comments are the latest example of the White House’s aggressive interventions in the private sector.

Such moves have historically only been undertaken in wartime, or to save struggling and strategic domestic companies during times of economic stress.

William Hartung, a senior research fellow at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a think tank, described the move as a bad idea.

He explained that it might “incentivise the government to put financial success for Lockheed Martin ahead of more important strategic considerations”.

“We need some healthy distance between the government and the companies it is supposed to regulate,” he added.

A growing government stake in private enterprise

But despite rumblings from critics, the Trump administration has forged forward with collecting stakes in various industries.

On Friday, it announced that Intel had sold the government a 10 percent stake in its chip-manufacturing business. And in June, the Trump administration intervened to complete Nippon Steel’s purchase of US Steel, taking what Trump called a “golden share” that gives Washington sway over its operations.

It also acquired a stake in MP Materials, a rare earths company, and brokered a deal with technology companies Nvidia and AMD to take 15 percent of their revenue from sales of chips to China that had previously been prohibited.

On Monday, Trump said he wanted to make more US government investments in healthy US companies, even as critics warn that such a role for the government could limit corporate strategy and market agility. Critics have also raised questions about the impact on consumers.

The unusual level of federal government intervention in the economy has created unexpected alliances. Left-leaning Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for example, backed the stake in Intel.

“If microchip companies make a profit from the generous grants they receive from the federal government, the taxpayers of America have a right to a reasonable return on that investment,” Sanders told the news agency Reuters last week.

Lutnick on Tuesday said that companies that need federal assistance should be prepared to deal with Trump.

“If a company comes to the United States of America government and says, ‘We need your help, we want to change everything’… I think that’s a question between the CEO and the president of the United States of whether he will listen to them and change the rules,” he told CNBC, citing the Nvidia deal.

“If we are adding fundamental value to your business, I think it’s fair for Donald Trump to think about the American people.”

Seoul, South Korea – South Korean President Lee Jae-myung is set to meet United States President Donald Trump for the first time in a high-stakes visit to his country’s closest and most important ally.

After a one-day meeting with Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba in Tokyo, Lee arrived in Washington, DC, on Sunday ahead of an official working-level meeting at the White House with Trump.

It will be the first time the two heads of state meet.

Their summit follows a trade deal in July in which Washington agreed to cut its reciprocal tariff on South Korea to 15 percent from an initially proposed 25 percent.

The meeting is crucial for South Korea, whose engagement with the Trump administration was disrupted by domestic political turmoil, ignited by the brief declaration of martial law announced in December by the country’s impeached former president, Yoon Suk-yeol.

Discussion will focus on ironing out details of the unwritten July trade deal, which involves South Korea agreeing to buy $100bn in US energy and invest $350bn in the US economy.

On top of those dizzying sums are direct investments in the US, which are expected from South Korean companies, and which Trump has mentioned will be decided during their talks.

Accompanied by first lady Kim Hea-kyung, Lee will lead a delegation formed by the heads of South Korean top conglomerates, including Samsung Electronics, SK Group, Hyundai Motor and LG Group.

The four companies alone are already known to contribute approximately 126 trillion won ($91.2bn) in direct investments to the US, according to the South Korean daily Maeil Business Newspaper.

Choi Yoon-jung, a principal research fellow at the Sejong Institute in Seoul, said Lee needs to be deliberate and direct with Trump in the talks, as “South Korea is in a tough predicament in terms of trade with the US compared to the past”.

“It will be important for President Lee to explain how investments will be designed to serve US national interests and to remind Trump that the two nations are close trading partners who went through large ordeals to realise their Free Trade Agreement over two decades ago,” Choi told Al Jazeera.

Mason Richey, a professor of international politics at the Hankuk University of Foreign Studies (HUFS), said the direction of the talks on investments is likely to be “unpredictable”.

“Not only are the current 15 percent tariffs overwhelmingly likely to stay on, but the investment part of the deal is likely to remain unclear and subject to unpredictable adjustment by the White House,” Richey told Al Jazeera.

Analysts say shipbuilding is one area where Trump clearly desires to have South Korea as a key partner to play catch-up to China’s naval fleet, which leads in terms of sheer numbers and is also making technological advancements.

Officials in Seoul have previously stated that a key component of the tariff deal with Washington would include a partnership worth about $150bn to assist in rebuilding the US shipbuilding industry.

To that end, after visiting the White House, Lee will head to Philadelphia to visit the Philly Shipyard, which was bought by the South Korean company Hanwha Group last year.

Analysts also say that battery production and semiconductors are some other sectors where Trump has set clear objectives to increase US capacity, and where South Korea has shown willingness and interest in being that partner.

“The South Korean government is also willing to actively participate in the ‘modernisation’ of its alliance with the US, that could include increasing contributions to upholding the region’s security and development,” said the Sejong Institute’s Choi.

Another major discussion point will be Seoul and Washington’s defence posture regarding the growing threats from North Korea, as well as the development of a strategic alliance to address the changing international security and economic environment.

“The pressures for the role of US forces on the Korean Peninsula to evolve has been growing for years,” Jenny Town, the director of the Washington, DC-based research programme 38 North, told Al Jazeera.

This evolution was especially so with great power competition increasing from China, Town said.

“The Trump administration is focused on how to maximise resources for US interests and priorities, so it is likely that some changes will be made during this term,” Town said.

“How drastic or dramatic those changes will depend on a number of factors, including the state of the US domestic political infrastructure that provides checks and balances to executive decisions,” she said.

A US Senate defence policy bill for fiscal year 2026 includes a ban on the use of funds to reduce the number of US Forces Korea (USFK) troops to below the current level of 28,500 service members.

“This makes it unlikely that there will be an immediate change in troop deployment numbers in South Korea,” Choi said.

“So, the big point of contention will be the job assignment of the troops to match US interests. I think there’s a possibility of Trump asking South Korea to take on a bigger role in regional security, such as taking part in the conflict involving Taiwan.”

Financial negotiations between Trump and Lee may also tip into security details, as the US president has regularly called for South Korea to pay more for the US troops stationed on its soil.

Trump has made that same call since his first presidential term.

In addition to providing more than $1bn for the presence of USFK forces, South Korea also paid the entire cost of building Camp Humphreys, the largest US base overseas, situated 64km (39 miles) south of Seoul.

Trump has said that he wants defence spending to reach closer to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) for all US allies.

Today, South Korea’s defence budget is at 3.5 percent of GDP.

Transfer of wartime operational command – referring to the transfer of control of South Korean forces during wartime from the US to South Korea – has long been a point of discussion between Seoul and Washington.

Under the Lee administration’s five-year governance plan, Seoul hopes to have the transition happen by 2030.

The Trump-Lee meeting also comes after North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister recently dismissed Washington and Seoul’s stated desires to restart diplomacy aimed at defusing Pyongyang’s nuclear programme.

Kim Yo Jong said that Seoul could never be a “diplomatic partner” with Pyongyang.

For Town, there were “interesting nuances” in Kim Yo Jong’s statements.

“While rejecting any kind of denuclearisation narrative as the basis of negotiations, her statements did create an opening for the US to engage North Korea to improve overall relations,” Town said.

“Kim suggested that there’s a reason for two countries with nuclear weapons to avoid confrontational relations. This begs the question of whether the US is actually interested in building a different relationship with North Korea that is not hinged on denuclearisation, and how US allies would see such an agenda,” Town said.

For Richey, the HUFS professor, the possibility of “Trump bypassing Lee in diplomacy with North Korea” poses a serious risk for South Korea down the road, in terms of influence and security.

In contrast to today’s lack of contact between Washington and Pyongyang, Trump’s first presidential term featured a suspension of US military exercises with South Korea and three separate meetings between the US president and North Korea’s Kim.

His desire to earn a Nobel Peace Prize could also offer another set of motivations for Trump to extend a US hand of friendship to Kim.

The South Korean president’s White House visit also coincides with annual, large-scale South Korean and US joint military exercises, which run for 11 days.

During a visit to North Korea’s most advanced warship last week, Kim denounced the drills as rehearsals for an invasion of North Korea and “an obvious expression of their will to provoke war”.

Also, last week, Beyond Parallel, a project of the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, unveiled an undocumented North Korean missile base about 25km (15.5 miles) from the border with China, which likely has intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) capable of reaching the US.

Town added that Russia could also play a cameo role in this summit.

“Lee may bring up the issue of how Russia’s relations with North Korea, especially their military cooperation, poses potential dangers to the alliance’s security interests,” she said.

“Talks could wind up to consideration of whether Trump’s relationship with [Russian President Vladimir] Putin may help mitigate the situation,” she said.

North Korea’s recent dealings with Russia adds another dimension to these inter-country relationships, as reciprocal exchanges of military troops for the receipt of food, energy, cash, weapons and technology have created a stable strategic bond between Moscow and Pyongyang.

Furthermore, North Korea has shown an interest in strengthening ties with another of the US’s biggest rivals – China.

“Ultimately, I believe Trump will continue to make overtures toward North Korea,” Choi said.

“He may seem to be pushing an isolationist strategy, but the matter of fact is that the US continues to be in the middle of negotiations and talks whenever a big conflict arises in the world,” she said.

The United States government will take a 10 percent stake in Intel under an agreement with the struggling chipmaker, President Donald Trump has said, marking the latest extraordinary intervention in corporate affairs.

The US agreed to purchase a 9.9 percent stake in Intel for $8.9bn at a price of $20.47 a share, which is a discount of about $4 per share from Intel’s closing share price of $24.80 on Friday.

The government will buy the 433.3 million shares with funding from the $5.7bn in unpaid CHIPS Act grants and $3.2bn awarded to Intel for the Secure Enclave program.

Intel shares dropped 1.2 percent in extended trading on Friday.

Trump is set to meet CEO Lip-Bu Tan later on Friday, a White House official said.

The development follows a meeting between CEO Lip-Bu Tan and Trump earlier this month that was sparked by Trump’s demand for the Intel chief’s resignation over his ties to Chinese firms.

“He walked in wanting to keep his job, and he ended up giving us $10bn for the United States,” Trump said on Friday.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on X that the deal had been completed. “The United States of America now owns 10% of Intel,” he wrote, saying Tan had struck a deal “that’s fair to Intel and fair to the American People.”

While Trump did not provide details on the $10bn, the equity stake is about equal to the amount Intel is set to receive in CHIPS Act grants from the government to help fund the building of chip plants in the US.

Change in direction

The move marks a clear change of direction and also follows a $2bn capital injection from SoftBank Group in what was a major vote of confidence for the troubled US chipmaker in the middle of a turnaround.

Federal backing could give Intel more breathing room to revive its loss-making foundry business, analysts said, but it still suffers from a weak product roadmap and challenges in attracting customers to its new factories.

Trump, who met Tan on August 11, has taken an unprecedented approach to national security. But critics worry Trump’s actions create new categories of corporate risk.

The US president has pushed for multibillion-dollar government tie-ups in semiconductors and rare earths, such as a pay-for-play deal with Nvidia and an arrangement with rare-earth producer MP Materials to secure critical minerals.

Tan, who took the top job at Intel in March, has been tasked to turn around the US chipmaking icon, which recorded an annual loss of $18.8bn in 2024 — its first such loss since 1986. The company’s last fiscal year of positive adjusted free cash flow was 2021.

Earlier this week, US Senator Bernie Sanders supported the plan. He and Senator Elizabeth Warren had previously said that the US Treasury Department should receive a warrant, equity stake or senior debt instrument from any company that receives government grants like Intel had under the 2022 CHIPS and Science Act, which sought to lure chip production away from Asia and boost US domestic semiconductor output with $39bn in subsidies.

United States President Donald Trump’s additional 25 percent tariff on India for its imports from Russia, saying it is helping fuel Russia’s war in Ukraine, has put the South Asian nation in the highest tier of tariffed nations so far.

While New Delhi and Moscow are old strategic partners with a relationship dating to the Cold War era, and Russia is a major supplier of India’s defence arsenal, Trump’s ire has predominantly been focused on the recent surge in India’s oil imports from its old ally.

India was “Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE – ALL THINGS NOT GOOD!” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform on July 30.

On August 19, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that “some of the richest families in India” were the biggest beneficiaries of these imports.

The biggest importer in India of Russian seaborne crude oil has been Reliance Industries (RIL), which is led by Asia’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani.

Russian crude comprised a mere 3 percent of RIL’s Jamnagar refinery’s total crude imports in 2021. Since the war in Ukraine, it has shot up to an average of 50 percent in 2025, according to data from the Finland-headquartered Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air (CREA).

In the first seven months of 2025, the Jamnagar refinery has imported 18.3 million tonnes of crude oil from Russia, a 64 percent year-on-year increase, and worth $8.7bn. RIL’s imports from Russia in the first seven months of 2025 are only 12 percent lower than the total imports in 2024, CREA said. Its methodology can be found here.

That shift has been driven by the price cap on Russian oil products that kicked in on February 5, 2023, Vaibhav Raghunandan, a European Union-Russia analyst at CREA, told Al Jazeera.

“The initial purpose of the price cap was to curtail Russian revenues, while also ensuring security of supply globally,” said Raghunandan. “A lowered price cap is technically supposed to make this oil more attractive for countries like India and China, but restrict Russian revenues.”

RIL did not respond to a detailed list of questions from Al Jazeera.

However, a stagnation of the level of the price cap – it has been at $60 for more than three years now – and a lack of enforcement have blunted its effect, Raghunandan added.

Instead, a shadow fleet – a fleet of hundreds of vessels operated by Russia to evade policing of its exports – has helped ensure that buyers paid higher than the price cap. As recently as January, approximately 83 percent of Russian crude was being transported via these vessels, as per CREA data. In June, that was down to 59 percent.

CREA tracked RIL’s Russian crude oil imports at its Jamnagar refinery and exports, from 2021 to the end of last month, for Al Jazeera.

It found that the Jamnagar refinery has exported $85.9bn of refined products globally from February 2023 till last month. An estimated 42 percent ($36bn) of those exports have gone to countries sanctioning Russia.

A third of their total exports, worth 17 billion euros ($19.7bn), have been to the EU and $6.3bn of oil products to the US, an estimated $2.3bn of which were processed from Russian crude.

The US is the fourth-biggest importer among individual countries, in value terms, from this refinery since the price caps came into effect, topped only by the United Arab Emirates, Australia and Singapore. In volume, the US is the biggest importer from the Jamnagar refinery, having imported 8.4 million tonnes of oil products since the price caps till the end of July 2025.

In 2025, the US imported $1.4bn of oil products from the refinery, a 14 percent year-on-year increase, the third most of any country globally.

US imports from Jamnagar consist mainly of blending components (64 percent), petrol (14 percent) and fuel oils (13 percent).

After RIL, Nayara Energy, which is majority-owned by Russian firms, including Rosneft, the state-owned oil and gas giant, has been a big importer of Russian crude. Its Vadinar refinery, the second-largest private refinery in India after Jamnagar, got, on average, 66 percent of its total crude imports this year from Russia.

In terms of actual volumes, Nayara’s Russian imports amount to a third of what Reliance imports from Russia for its Jamnagar refinery, CREA said.

‘A total sham’

Analysts say it would be simplistic to suggest that India is bearing the cost of the additional tariffs just for the benefit of one company.

“It seems to me that even if most of the profits went to Reliance, the Indian government has found it convenient to continue this trade with Russia, both because the cheaper oil imports helped with India’s current account deficit and also helped send a message of non-alignment,” said Rachel Ziemba, an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security, where she focuses on the interlinkages between economics, finance and security issues.

India has historically sought to demonstrate strategic independence from major powers, refusing to align formally even during the Cold War with either the US or the Soviet Union.

Ajay Srivastava, founder of the Delhi-based Global Trade Research Initiative, told Al Jazeera that Trump’s tariff for India’s import of Russian oil was “a total sham”.

“The whole thing of putting tariffs is a sham when they haven’t called out the biggest importer of Russian oil that is China,” Srivastava said, adding that Trump was “scared to call out China … If tomorrow Trump and [Russian President Vladimir] Putin come to an agreement [over Ukraine], US will find another pretext to put tariffs on India” as the tariffs were driven by other issues including Trump’s frustrations over India not giving into US trade demands.

Reliance, he said, may have profited from the lower crude prices for Russian oil, and the only reason that is under scrutiny is that it is a private firm, and it is human nature to question the wealthy.

Since the price cap kicked in and till the end of last month, 38 percent of US imports of blending components, 4 percent of jet fuel imports and 2 percent of petrol imports have come from the Jamnagar refinery.

Analysts predict some changes in the offing. The EU has put in place a ban on imports of refined petroleum processed from Russian crude, a “significant policy change”, said CREA’s Raghunandan, adding that “if enforced strongly, it will be hugely impactful”. The ban is set to begin in January.

More than half of RIL’s jet fuel exports have been to the EU, and “losing this market would therefore impact their revenues from some products heavier than others. But overall, it will create a significant rethink for their export strategy”, he said.

But RIL in December also signed a 10-year contract with Rosneft, and it is not clear how that would play out with the sanctions.