Highlights for the morning: Anthropic under pressure, Starbucks slashes costs and new US duties

Donald Trump has imposed stiff duties - 100% on brand-name drugs, 25% on heavy trucks and up to 50% on furniture - as part of a drive to bring manufacturing back to the US. Meta, despite its investment in AI, is discussing using Google's Gemini models to boost its advertising algorithms. Starbucks announced a $1 billion restructuring with the closure of 500 coffee shops and the layoff of 900 employees in an attempt to bring back sales growth. On these and other topics - in our review of key events for the morning of September 26.

Starting October 1, Donald Trump's administration will impose a 100 percent duty on all branded and patented drugs imported into the United States, CNBC reported. Only those pharmaceutical companies that have already started building production facilities in the country will get an exception. Trump said such measures should bring manufacturing back to the US, but the industry warns of rising prices and supply disruptions.

Pharmaceutical giants, including Eli Lilly, Johnson & Johnson and Pfizer, have already expressed concerns: the duties could reduce investment in innovation and exacerbate drug shortages. J&J expects the duties to cost it $400 million in 2025. Experts believe that due to the complexity of global supply chains, a rapid "relocation" of production to the US is unrealistic and will only lead to market destabilization.

Trump is also imposing other duties starting October 1: 25% on imports of heavy trucks, 50% on kitchen cabinets and 30% on upholstered furniture.

U.S. regulators have begun probing the dramatic stock swings of more than 200 publicly traded companies that announced planned investments in cryptocurrency this year, the WSJ reports. The SEC and FINRA suspected possible cases of insider trading and disclosure violations.

The agencies contacted a number of companies to find out if there was a selective transfer of undisclosed data prior to cryptocurrency purchase announcements. The SEC warned the companies about the risks of violating the Market Manipulation Act.

Many companies have tried to replicate the strategy of Strategy, which began buying up bitcoins back in 2020. But now cryptocurrency strategies have come under scrutiny from regulators, especially amid recent scandals and lawsuits against exchanges Binance and Coinbase.

US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order approving a deal to transfer control of TikTok to US investors, CNBC reports. Under the terms, ByteDance will retain less than 20% in the new structure, and the main shareholders will be Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX, which will get about 45%. ByteDance investors and new shareholders will get another 35%.

Oracle will also be responsible for TikTok's security and cloud services in the US. The deal values TikTok's U.S. business at $14 billion, although earlier analysts were talking about a value of up to $35 billion. China must formally approve the agreement - it is not yet clear whether the necessary legal changes will be made.

Trump's executive order suspends threat to block TikTok in the US: deadline to comply with Homeland Security Act requirements extended to December 16. The government will not own a stake in the company and will not receive a "golden share".

Meta is in preliminary talks with Google Cloud about possibly using the Gemini and Gemma models to improve ad accuracy, The Information reports. The idea of pre-training these AIs on Meta's data is being discussed, despite the fact that the companies are direct competitors in the advertising market.

Meta's interest in external AI models points to the difficulties in scaling its own developments despite multi-billion dollar investments. Earlier it was reported that Meta is also considering cooperation with OpenAI to implement AI functions in the Meta AI chatbot and the company's social networks.

Google representatives declined to comment, Meta did not respond to a request for comment.

Starbucks has announced a major $1 billion restructuring that includes closing about 500 coffee shops in North America and laying off 900 office staff, CNBC reports. It's part of Back to Starbucks' strategy to improve the customer experience and rebuild sales after six quarters of decline.

Most of the costs (about $850 mln) are related to the closure of outlets, and another $150 mln is spent on compensation for those laid off. The company will continue to optimize the network in 2025, but intends to build up its presence again from 2026. Baristas from the closing cafes will be transferred to other outlets or receive severance pay.

A U.S. federal court has tentatively approved startup Anthropic's proposal to pay $1.5 billion in a class action lawsuit from authors who accused the company of illegally downloading books from pirate resources like Library Genesis, CNBC reports. This is the largest known compensation in a copyright infringement case.

Under the terms of the agreement, Anthropic will pay approximately $3,000 for each book and destroy the datasets containing the pirated material. Judge William Alsup gave preliminary approval after weeks of studying the proposal and will return for final approval after notice and demand procedures are completed.

The startup, founded by former OpenAI employees and valued at $183 billion, said it wants to focus on developing secure AI and solving scientific and application problems, and the settlement only affects "narrow claims" about data sources.

- Japan's broad Topix index rose 0.1%. The benchmark Nikkei 225 fell by 0.5%.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index was down 2.9 percent, while the Kosdaq small-company index fell 2.6 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.13%.

- Futures on the Nasdaq 100 fell 0.1 percent, the S&P 500 rose 0.1 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was little changed.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor