U.S. President Donald Trump addresses the nation in the East Room of the White House on July 16, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
Hello, this is Leonie Kidd from London.
Happy Friday! A volatile trading week is coming to an end with President Donald Trump dominating the headlines. The evening’s speech in Washington began with a bang, calling for television stations refusing to broadcast the speech to have their broadcast licenses revoked.
Here are the details…
What you need to know today
President Donald Trump accused China of widespread interference in the 2020 election in a prime-time address to the nation Thursday night. Sowing further doubt about America’s voting system, President Trump said there were “shocking vulnerabilities in our election infrastructure.”
He claimed that newly declassified documents on the White House website show that China had “illegally obtained 220 million U.S. voter files” since 2020, when Trump was president.
The accusations could complicate the fragile trade ceasefire between the United States and China, as well as cast a shadow over Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington, D.C., scheduled for September 24.
power of information
Meanwhile, President Trump’s longtime teleprompter operator has been suspended after coming under federal investigation for alleged bets made on prediction market platform Karshi. The operator allegedly made more than $90,000 in profits from trading related to President Trump’s comments.
White House press secretary Caroline Levitt said the operator had been placed on unpaid leave, which the president considered “deeply disappointing and frankly disgraceful.”
Separately, Trump Media and Technology Group has launched a paid data feed that will give trading companies “fastest access” to Trump’s truthful social posts. The product, scheduled to be released on August 1st, is called the Truth API and will target 10 accounts for algorithmic trading companies on Trump’s social network.
the chips are still down
Asian semiconductor stocks are tracking falls in AI stocks on Wall Street, with losses concentrated in Japan. As the South Korean market was closed for a public holiday, stocks such as SoftBank and TSMC saw the heaviest selling.
“Yesterday’s results for TSMC in Asia were not seen as strong enough to warrant further gains in the sector, raising concerns about overspending, with another recent momentum winner wiping out US tech and AI again,” said Andrew Jackson, strategist at Otus Advisors.
Netflix and sales
Netflix stock fell more than 8% in after-hours trading after the streaming giant disappointed investors with its latest earnings forecast. The group described content engagement, which live events are particularly good at, as “healthy.”
However, co-CEO Greg Peters said on an earnings call that “not all time is created equal, so there is no linear relationship between screen time and revenue and profit.”
— Leonie Kidd
And finally…
Has Nike lost its “cool” factor? LeBron James also participated
LeBron James hasn’t decided which NBA team he’ll play for next. In his first public appearance since telling the Los Angeles Lakers he would become a free agent, James attended the CNBC Sports x Boardroom Game Plan Summit and told Boardroom’s Rich Kleinman that he plans to play elsewhere and “I’m not going to keep you guys any longer.”
But what remains up in the air is what kind of shoes he will wear, as James’ storied career is closely tied to Nike.
— Ian Thomas
