Expanded tariffs mean extinguishing fires could be costlier

Tariff-related ruction appears to be settling down, but U.S. President Donald Trump is still reshaping global trade and industry — and everyday life.

After the Trump administration hinted it could be open to Nvidia exporting more powerful chips to China after their revenue-sharing agreement, the semiconductor darling was reported to be developing a new chip for Beijing.

And Intel’s bounty from the CHIPS Act, formalized by the previous administration under Joe Biden, might come with a price tag of giving the current U.S. government a stake in the company. Other companies that have received funding from the same act — such as Micron and Samsung — may be subject to the same exchange, Reuters reported.

Meanwhile, the effects of tariffs continue to creep into the home.

The costs incurred by fires in the U.S. — think of the tragic Los Angeles wildfires in January or the one near the Grand Canyon just last month — are already growing, not just in terms of the physical damage but also the price of insurance premiums.

And now that Trump has added fire extinguishers to a list of steel products that will face a 50% import tariff, even the price of relatively more benign and contained fires, such as those you start to burn photographs of your ex-partner, will be more expensive to put out. That’s a truly protest-worthy tariff.

The price is REIT: UK-quoted property sector is consolidating rapidly

Episodes in which the mighty KKR receives a bloody nose are collector’s items — but we had one in the U.K. last week. The private equity giant was thwarted in an attempt to buy Assura, a property company that owns more than 600 doctor’s surgeries and medical centers.

That speaks to a bigger story — which is that U.K. stock market investors have concluded valuations in the country’s REIT (real estate investment trust) sector had become ridiculously low.

— Ian King