MMN Editor

Broadcast Retirement Network’s Jeffrey Snyder discusses how cryptocurrencies are being used by the World’s bad actors with the Henry Jackson Society’s Alexander Browder.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkJoining me now is Alex Browder of the Henry Jackson Society. Alex, thanks so much for joining us on the program this morning. Thanks for having me.You recently released a report for the Henry Jackson Society. I’m very interested in this because it talks about the crypto industry. And I guess my first question is, I know cryptocurrency is becoming popular in kind of the mainstream, but how popular is it among some of the world’s worst actors?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietyYeah, so with the proliferation of cryptocurrency, criminal use has exploded by both hostile governments and bad actors around the world, creating millions of victims and facilitating an increase in sanctions evasion. So over the past year, I’ve created the largest open source database of cryptocurrency laundering, featuring 164 of the most prominent cases, and in total, over $350 billion has been laundered through cryptocurrency. Notably, Iran, North Korea and Russia all have been prevalent roles or have had prevalent roles within this ecosystem.So it’s really a national security issue at this moment.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkYeah, and why cryptocurrency? Why didn’t they use the traditional ways of, I’m going to call it money laundering, I’m not an expert, but why did they pick cryptocurrency?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietySo as a tool which isn’t freely controlled by any government or standard institution, it provides an alternate way for criminals and also hostile governments like North Korea, which are cut off from the main financial systems. So they can profit, first of all, of people within the cryptocurrency industry and also use cryptocurrency as a way to launder funds.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkAnd is it possible to hide a transaction? We’ll get into this a little bit later about the regulatory apparatus here in the States and in the UK, but is it possible for these governments to actually hide a transaction, meaning even if the regulators were looking, they couldn’t find it?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietyYeah, so this is the paradox of cryptocurrency. For most cryptocurrency assets, every time there’s a transaction, it’s recorded on a public ledger called a blockchain. And so this becomes an issue for criminals who want to hide their tracks.So what they’ve come up with is different laundering techniques and even different cryptocurrencies. So firstly, I’ve identified several different kinds of laundering techniques. One of the most prevalent techniques is something called mixing.This is where criminals are able to send their cryptocurrency into a mixing service, and it sends out a completely different address. So it’s harder for authorities to track the incoming and outgoing address together. So I’ve identified 10 of the largest mixes, which have processed a total of 9.7 billion dollars. But this is just one of the many techniques that have popped up, and I’m happy to talk about it more. But secondly, they’ve also gone so far as to set up their own cryptocurrencies, which are much harder to trace. For example, Monero, which is apparently completely untraceable, meaning bad actors can get away without any of this public tracking.And so you’ve seen this pop up a lot in darknet marketplaces where criminals are selling drugs and fentanyl and other serious issues.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkSo let me ask you about, at the outset of our interview, I talked about kind of how cryptocurrency is kind of coming into the mainstream. So there are a lot more retail investors, there’s a lot more institutional investors, both here in the States and in the UK, across the world, really. Should this scare those people?Or should that concern these people who are investing? Does this laundering have an impact on what they’re doing?Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietyI think that definitely the use of crypto by these bad actors should concern legitimate retail and institutional investors. Let me highlight a couple of scenarios for you. So firstly, retail investors who are duped into investing into major cryptocurrency Ponzi schemes can have their life savings disappear.For example, recently, there was this case of the Airbit Club, where it was marketed as a cryptocurrency mining and trading business. And after paying for membership, victims got access to an online portal that displayed profits that accumulated over time. But according to the DOJ, those profits were completely fabricated, and it processed over $100 million in victims throughout the United States.And they were eventually convicted. But this is one of many cases of Ponzi schemes, where they promote themselves as a key trading platform, investment platform, and take in large amounts of funds from everyone. Not only that, people who are just invested in the cryptocurrency space, either through their personal wallets or cryptocurrency exchanges can have their funds stolen within seconds.I’ve got many examples of this, but I want to highlight a few egregious cases, most of which are carried out by North Korea. For example, in February 2025, there was a really prominent case by the North Koreans. They stole $1.5 billion from a cryptocurrency exchange in two seconds. So you can have $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency drained within a few seconds. And this goes directly to funding North Korean nuclear program. And then also, the year before this, there was another major hack from the Harmony Bridge hack, where over $100 million was stolen.And 65,000 people had all their money stolen, and they were left without compensation. And the funds lay dormant for seven months until they were laundered. So this is one of many, but not even that.People who are not even in the cryptocurrency industry, and who are just regular individuals, can also see effects of this. So a key aspect of my report is ransomware. And for your audience, which don’t know specifically what that is, it’s when malicious actors steal data and encrypt it and force companies or governments to pay.So there was a really prevalent case of this when the colonial pipeline in the U.S. had to shut down after it was attacked through a cyber attack. They had to pay $4.4 million. And then, not only that, the pipeline normally moves close to 2.5 million barrels a day in oil, and that completely got shut down. So you saw 70% of all gas stations in Washington, D.C., North Carolina, and other states all ran out of gas. And this meant that the U.S. gas prices topped $3 for the first time since 2014. So even if you’re not in the cryptocurrency space, you can still feel the effects of this.And especially a more recent development where institutional retail investors can feel is in the surge in scams and fake advertising directly targeting senior citizens and people who are less knowledgeable around cryptocurrency.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkNo, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt. We’re kind of coming up short on time, but I did want to kind of follow up, and we can bring you back to talk more about this, because this is not going to get solved in eight to 10 minutes.But let’s talk about the regulatory framework. Is it strengthened enough? Is it thorough enough here in the U.S., the U.K., and in other European markets to regulate and define these bad actors? It sounds like they might have some catching up to do. Yeah.Alexander Browder, Henry Jackson SocietySo from what I’ve identified, criminals are running circles around authorities and regulators across the globe. There’s an inequality of arms between the authorities and the criminals. The criminals have billions to launder and have many means to do it, whereas authorities are currently underfunded and overstretched, meaning it’s hard for them to trace down every attack, every complaint, which makes this industry rife for malicious actors.And so what I’m trying to propose, I was in U.K. Parliament earlier this week, is that we increase funding for cryptocurrency teams and even set up their own specialized cryptocurrency enforcement agencies, which can protect victims and stop bad actors like North Korea.Jeffrey Snyder, Broadcast Retirement NetworkClearly, there’s a lot of work to do. I think it’s probably really hard for governments. You’re kind of reacting.I just might have thought you’re reacting to what these bad actors are doing. It’s like playing football or Australian rugby. The defense doesn’t know what the offense is going to call, so it kind of has to react.I think governments are probably trying to react, but they need more resources. This is a big issue, especially when it impacts regular citizens, older citizens who have saved money for decades and decades. Alex, we’re going to have to leave it there.Great research, great report. We thank you so much and we look forward to having you back on the program again very soon. Thanks for having me on.

NanoClaw, the open-source AI agent platform created by Gavriel Cohen, is partnering with the containerized development platform Docker to let teams run agents inside Docker Sandboxes, a move aimed at one of the biggest obstacles to enterprise adoption: how to give agents room to act without giving them room to damage the systems around them.The announcement matters because the market for AI agents is shifting from novelty to deployment. It is no longer enough for an agent to write code, answer questions or automate a task. For CIOs, CTOs and platform leaders, the harder question is whether that agent can safely connect to live data, modify files, install packages and operate across business systems without exposing the host machine, adjacent workloads or other agents.That is the problem NanoClaw and Docker say they are solving together.A security argument, not just a packaging updateNanoClaw launched as a security-first alternative in the rapidly growing “claw” ecosystem, where agent frameworks promise broad autonomy across local and cloud environments. The project’s core argument has been that many agent systems rely too heavily on software-level guardrails while running too close to the host machine.This Docker integration pushes that argument down into infrastructure.“The partnership with Docker is integrating NanoClaw with Docker Sandboxes,” Cohen said in an interview. “The initial version of NanoClaw used Docker containers for isolating each agent, but Docker Sandboxes is the proper enterprise-ready solution for rolling out agents securely.”That progression matters because the central issue in enterprise agent deployment is isolation. Agents do not behave like traditional applications. They mutate their environments, install dependencies, create files, launch processes and connect to outside systems. That breaks many of the assumptions underlying ordinary container workflows.Cohen framed the issue in direct terms: “You want to unlock the full potential of these highly capable agents, but you don’t want security to be based on trust. You have to have isolated environments and hard boundaries.”That line gets at the broader challenge facing enterprises now experimenting with agents in production-like settings. The more useful agents become, the more access they need. They need tools, memory, external connections and the freedom to take actions on behalf of users and teams. But each gain in capability raises the stakes around containment. A compromised or badly behaving agent cannot be allowed to spill into the host environment, expose credentials or access another agent’s state.Why agents strain conventional infrastructureDocker president and COO Mark Cavage said that reality forced the company to rethink some of the assumptions built into standard developer infrastructure.“Fundamentally, we had to change the isolation and security model to work in the world of agents,” Cavage said. “It feels like normal Docker, but it’s not.”He explained why the old model no longer holds. “Agents break effectively every model we’ve ever known,” Cavage said. “Containers assume immutability, but agents break that on the very first call. The first thing they want to do is install packages, modify files, spin up processes, spin up databases — they want full mutability and a full machine to run in.”That is a useful framing for enterprise technical decision-makers. The promise of agents is not that they behave like static software with a chatbot front end. The promise is that they can perform open-ended work. But open-ended work is exactly what creates new security and governance problems. An agent that can install a package, rewrite a file tree, start a database process or access credentials is more operationally useful than a static assistant. It is also more dangerous if it is running in the wrong environment.Docker’s answer is Docker Sandboxes, which use MicroVM-based isolation while preserving familiar Docker packaging and workflows. According to the companies, NanoClaw can now run inside that infrastructure with a single command, giving teams a more secure execution layer without forcing them to redesign their agent stack from scratch.Cavage put the value proposition plainly: “What that gets you is a much stronger security boundary. When something breaks out — because agents do bad things — it’s truly bounded in something provably secure.”That emphasis on containment rather than trust lines up closely with NanoClaw’s original thesis. In earlier coverage of the project, NanoClaw was positioned as a leaner, more auditable alternative to broader and more permissive frameworks. The argument was not just that it was open source, but that its simplicity made it easier to reason about, secure and customize for production use.Cavage extended that argument beyond any single product. “Security is defense in depth,” he said. “You need every layer of the stack: a secure foundation, a secure framework to run in, and secure things users build on top.”That is likely to resonate with enterprise infrastructure teams that are less interested in model novelty than in blast radius, auditability and layered control. Agents may still rely on the intelligence of frontier models, but what matters operationally is whether the surrounding system can absorb mistakes, misfires or adversarial behavior without turning one compromised process into a wider incident.The enterprise case for many agents, not oneThe NanoClaw-Docker partnership also reflects a broader shift in how vendors are beginning to think about agent deployment at scale. Instead of one central AI system doing everything, the model emerging here is many bounded agents operating across teams, channels and tasks.“What OpenClaw and the claws have shown is how to get tremendous value from coding agents and general-purpose agents that are available today,” Cohen said. “Every team is going to be managing a team of agents.”He pushed that idea further in the interview, sketching a future closer to organizational systems design than to the consumer assistant model that still dominates much of the AI conversation. “In businesses, every employee is going to have their personal assistant agent, but teams will manage a team of agents, and a high-performing team will manage hundreds or thousands of agents,” Cohen said.That is a more useful enterprise lens than the usual consumer framing. In a real organization, agents are likely to be attached to distinct workflows, data stores and communication surfaces. Finance, support, sales engineering, developer productivity and internal operations may all have different automations, different memory and different access rights. A secure multi-agent future depends less on generalized intelligence than on boundaries: who can see what, which process can touch which file system, and what happens when one agent fails or is compromised.NanoClaw’s product design is built around that kind of orchestration. The platform sits on top of Claude Code and adds persistent memory, scheduled tasks, messaging integrations and routing logic so agents can be assigned work across channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, Slack and Discord. The release says this can all be configured from a phone, without writing custom agent code, while each agent remains isolated inside its own container runtime.Cohen said one practical goal of the Docker integration is to make that deployment model easier to adopt. “People will be able to go to the NanoClaw GitHub, clone the repository, and run a single command,” he said. “That will get their Docker Sandbox set up running NanoClaw.”That ease of setup matters because many enterprise AI deployments still fail at the point where promising demos have to become stable systems. Security features that are too hard to deploy or maintain often end up bypassed. A packaging model that lowers friction without weakening boundaries is more likely to survive internal adoption.An open-source partnership with strategic weightThe partnership is also notable for what it is not. It is not being positioned as an exclusive commercial alliance or a financially engineered enterprise bundle.“There’s no money involved,” Cavage said. “We found this through the foundation developer community. NanoClaw is open source, and Docker has a long history in open source.”That may strengthen the announcement rather than weaken it. In infrastructure, the most credible integrations often emerge because two systems fit technically before they fit commercially. Cohen said the relationship began when a Docker developer advocate got NanoClaw running in Docker Sandboxes and demonstrated that the combination worked.“We were able to put NanoClaw into Docker Sandboxes without making any architecture changes to NanoClaw,” Cohen said. “It just works, because we had a vision of how agents should be deployed and isolated, and Docker was thinking about the same security concerns and arrived at the same design.”For enterprise buyers, that origin story signals that the integration was not forced into existence by a go-to-market arrangement. It suggests genuine architectural compatibility.Docker is also careful not to cast NanoClaw as the only framework it will support. Cavage said the company plans to work broadly across the ecosystem, even as NanoClaw appears to be the first “claw” included in Docker’s official packaging. The implication is that Docker sees a wider market opportunity around secure agent runtime infrastructure, while NanoClaw gains a more recognizable enterprise foundation for its security posture.The bigger story: infrastructure catching up to agentsThe deeper significance of this announcement is that it shifts attention from model capability to runtime design. That may be where the real enterprise competition is heading.The AI industry has spent the last two years proving that models can reason, code and orchestrate tasks with growing sophistication. The next phase is proving that these systems can be deployed in ways security teams, infrastructure leaders and compliance owners can live with.NanoClaw has argued from the start that agent security cannot be bolted on at the application layer. Docker is now making a parallel argument from the runtime side. “The world is going to need a different set of infrastructure to catch up to what agents and AI demand,” Cavage said. “They’re clearly going to get more and more autonomous.”That could turn out to be the central story here. Enterprises do not just need more capable agents. They need better boxes to put them in.For organizations experimenting with AI agents today, the NanoClaw-Docker integration offers a concrete picture of what that box might look like: open-source orchestration on top, MicroVM-backed isolation underneath, and a deployment model designed around containment rather than trust.In that sense, this is more than a product integration. It is an early blueprint for how enterprise agent infrastructure may evolve: less emphasis on unconstrained autonomy, more emphasis on bounded autonomy that can survive contact with real production systems.

After falling just short of the Super Bowl, Sean McVay and the Los Angeles Rams attacked the 2026 NFL offseason—bringing back Matthew Stafford and adding Trent McDuffie and Jaylen Watson to build a roster ready for another championship run.

Hope and her ex-husband, Chase McWhorter, were one of the couples who swung with Taylor Frankie Paul.

Valerie Bertinelli says she’s “lucky to have survived” after she got a serious infection following a breast augmentation surgery.The 65-year-old wrote in her new memoir, “Getting Naked,” that she always hated her naturally small breasts and decided to get implants in the 1980s.While she wanted a modest change to her cleavage, somehow she ended up with results more dramatic than she intended. “After I got the implants, I never put them on display. I tried to hide them even, embarrassed that I had done it,” she wrote.VALERIE BERTINELLI ADMITS THAT EDDIE VAN HALEN AND TOM VITALE SPLITS WERE ‘COMPLETELY DIFFERENT’She said by the time she taped her last episode of “Hot in Cleveland,” which aired in 2015, her implants were painful and made her back hurt.”Something had to be done,” she wrote.Bertinelli said she meant to consult a doctor about the procedure, but ended up putting it off until she fell down the stairs.COMEDIAN LEANNE MORGAN MAKES SURPRISING PLASTIC SURGERY DECISION AT AGE 60 INSPIRED BY HER GRANDCHILDRENShe said she went into her son’s room with his wife at his house to wake him up for a radio interview.”I stole his phone, and he chased after me. I sprinted down the stairs, tripped, and landed on my right boob,” Bertinelli explained. “I heard a pop. I knew exactly what had happened.”She had the surgery, in which her old implants were removed, and smaller ones were put in, six weeks later.’MORMON WIVES’ STAR SAYS PLASTIC SURGERY NIGHTMARE RUINED HER LIFE AND REALITY TV CAREERAnd for the first two weeks, “everything was great.” But a week later, she began experiencing discoloration, swelling, and she felt herself “getting dizzy. By nighttime, I was running a fever,” which went up to 104 degrees.By Monday, she said she “was really sick.” “The doctor saw me that morning. I could tell by the look on his face that I was in trouble,” she said.VALERIE BERTINELLI SAYS DIET COMPANY FIRED HER AFTER REGAINING WEIGHTCalling it an emergency, her doctor immediately sent her to an aftercare clinic for intravenous antibiotics.The next morning, she was back in surgery to have her new implant and the infection removed.KATE WINSLET SLAMS HOLLYWOOD’S ‘TERRIFYING’ OBSESSION WITH BOTOX AND WEIGHT-LOSS DRUGSAfter her second surgery, she said she was “bummed” to have to miss a Jon Bon Jovi tribute concert her son was playing in, but he, her daughter-in-law and brother persuaded her to stay home and rest.”The have-you-lost-your-mind looks they gave me all said the same thing: ‘What part about almost dying from an infection don’t you get?’” she wrote.KALEY CUOCO SAYS ‘BAD’ BOTOX MISHAP LEFT HER SHOCKED BY HOW HER FACE LOOKED ON ‘BIG BANG THEORY’Bertinelli said she had to go to the doctor’s office every day, so her wound could be cleaned and repacked with antibiotic ointments and bandages.CLICK HERE TO SIGN UP FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSLETTERSeven months after her first surgery, she had a third one to install a replacement implant.LIKE WHAT YOU’RE READING? CLICK HERE FOR MORE ENTERTAINMENT NEWSAfter that surgery, she said her boobs were two different sizes because the implant on her left side is over the muscle, “and my right side is sad and misshapen.”At some point, she said she’ll have a fourth operation to even out her breasts, but she decided to wait after so many surgeries.”Eventually, I’ll be on Medicare and my perky new boobs will be ready for the high school prom,” she joked.She added, “One morning, I walked outside in my backyard. Bandaged but on the rebound, I took baby steps through my garden. I looked at the flowers and the trees, standing tall and short, reaching up and branching out, all gorgeous, but none alike. Every single one was unique in its beauty. No one shape, color, or pattern exactly alike. That’s the way Mother Nature works. When we aren’t blind to her genius, if we aren’t questioning her or trying to fool her, her answers to our questions are right in front of us.””Getting Naked” was released on March 10. 

Top House Republicans are eyeing a surge in military funding as the U.S. continues its joint operation with Israel against Iran, and some are arguing that a second “big, beautiful bill” is the vehicle to get it done.Republicans are discussing the possibility of supplemental funding to aid the U.S. effort as Iran continues to retaliate against allies in the region. Senior House GOP lawmakers told Fox News Digital that the resulting heightened national security environment means that Congress has a responsibility to ensure the Armed Forces are prepared for whatever threats may arise. At the same time, they’re skeptical that Democrats will provide the votes necessary to pass such a funding bill through traditional means.”They are certainly not going to spend an additional dime on the military, on security, on any of the things that we care about,” Republican Study Committee Chairman August Pfluger, R-Texas, told Fox News Digital of the opposing party. “The threats around the world have never been higher. They’ve never been greater. And we have to recapitalize after four just disastrous years of President Biden completely decimating our military.”OPERATION EPIC FURY SURVIVES SENATE CHALLENGE AS REPUBLICANS CLOSE RANKS BEHIND TRUMP”So this conflict right now, and the future of our country and our Western values, have to be secured by additional defense spending, which can only happen in a reconciliation bill.”Republicans passed a sweeping tax and policy bill last summer dubbed President Donald Trump’s landmark One Big, Beautiful Bill Act. It was done via the budget reconciliation process, which allows the party in power to change broad swaths of fiscal law while sidelining the minority party — in this case, Democrats.It makes that possible by lowering the threshold for advancing legislation in the Senate from 60 votes to a simple majority, lining it up with the House.REPORTER’S NOTEBOOK: GOP TARGETS AFFORDABILITY WITH RECONCILIATION 2.0 PLAN AHEAD OF MIDTERMSHouse Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington, R-Texas, said he believed an additional funding package for Iran was inevitable but added, “The politics are such that there’s no guarantee that the supplemental will pass.””On top of that, the president has been talking about a big capital investment to modernize the military,” Arrington told Fox News Digital. “If we can’t get Democrats to support either of those endeavors — I think we’ve got a better chance of getting support on an emergency supplemental than we do on a one-time capital investment — but I think that reconciliation may be the only train leaving the station that could address those important things.”Pfluger also signaled a broader path: “Is it specific to Iran or is it more general and more broad to just increasing defense spending and making sure that our military has what they need to deter Iran and others? I think that’s probably the more likely path.”However, he noted that reconciliation meant that spending would likely have to be offset by cuts elsewhere, something that could appease fiscal hawks wary of bloated spending levels.”So where do we find the savings? I’ve got some ideas on that. I think it’s related to fraud. I think there’s a lot of money to be saved when we look at fraud, like what happened in Minnesota with the daycares and the billions of dollars that went out the window there,” Pfluger said.THE HITCHHIKER’S GUIDE TO CONGRESS’ OPTIONS ON HAMSTRINGING TRUMP’S WAR POWERS IN IRANThe idea of a second reconciliation bill has already been met with skepticism by a significant number of Republicans, many of whom have cited the GOP’s razor-thin majorities in the House and Senate.But a senior House Republican who also spoke with Fox News Digital argued that the situation in Iran could bring the unity Republicans need.”That would be the biggest motivating factor in another reconciliation bill,” the lawmaker said.And Pfluger pointed out that there was precedent — Democrats passed two reconciliation bills themselves when they last controlled Congress at the beginning of former President Joe Biden’s term.”We should remind ourselves that they stuck together, and they were able to do that. So should we,” he said.But Arrington warned that lawmakers would have to move fast for something to be attainable.”The window is closing, and I don’t see us being able to do a reconciliation bill if we get past the spring, because we’ll be too close to the election,” Arrington said.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Air Force General Dan Caine hold press briefing on Operation Epic Fury – photo by Jordan Conradson
War Secretary Pete Hegseth will deliver a press briefing with Air Force General Dan Caine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as the war in Iran closes its second week. 
This comes amid reports from Iranian TV and other outlets that Iran’s new Supreme Leader, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, was wounded as US and Israeli strikes continue to bombard Iran.
Iran’s new Supreme Leader issued a lengthy written statement, which was read out by Iranian state TV, but he did not make a televised appearance, as reports suggest that his injuries are severe.
“He is understood to have lost at least one leg in the incident and is believed to have sustained severe internal injuries, possibly to his stomach or liver,” GBN reports, noting that he may even be in a coma, according to sources.
THE INVISIBLE AYATOLLAH: Mojtaba Khamenei Still Nowhere To Be Seen, as Reports Suggest He Has ‘Lost a Leg’ and Is ‘In a Coma’

Khamenei’s statement calls for “all nations of the Resistance Front,” neighboring countries in Iran’s proxy network, to utilize the “leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz” and exact revenge on behalf of the “martyrs” of Iran.
Meanwhile, Israeli and US strikes have continued on Iran, targeting infrastructure and military sites, including drone and missile capabilities.
 
The press briefing is scheduled to begin at 8 am ET.
Watch live below:
 
The post WATCH LIVE: War Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Dan Caine Deliver Press Briefing – 8 AM ET appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.

Ulta Beauty’s stock was among the S&P 500’s biggest decliners after a downbeat earnings outlook.

US Tariff Investigations Put China, EU And Other Major Trading Partners In New Crosshairs

The Trump administration has opened a new round of tariff investigations that could lead to higher duties on at least 16 trading partners, as officials seek to rebuild a trade enforcement framework after the Supreme Court invalidated a number of the president’s second-term tariffs.

The probes, announced Wednesday by the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, will be conducted under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, a statute that allows the U.S. to impose tariffs on countries whose policies are deemed to discriminate against American commerce. The investigations require consultations with foreign governments as well as public hearings and comment periods before any new tariffs can be imposed.

The effort is intended to replace temporary global tariffs of 10% that President Donald Trump imposed last month after the Supreme Court ruled many of his earlier duties unlawful. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said officials have not yet determined how high the replacement tariffs might be, declining to prejudge the outcome of the investigations. Administration economic officials have previously indicated they aim to generate tariff revenue comparable to levels collected before the court’s decision, the WSJ reports.

The Probes

One investigation launched Wednesday will examine what U.S. officials describe as industrial overcapacity in export-oriented economies. The administration argues that subsidies in some countries allow producers to flood global markets with underpriced goods, undermining American manufacturers. Nations likely to face scrutiny include major U.S. trading partners such as China, India, Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the European Union.

“Our view is that key trading partners have developed production capacity that is really untethered from the market incentives of domestic and global demand,” Greer told reporters ahead of the investigation’s release.

A second probe, expected later this week, will examine foreign policies related to forced labor. The inquiry could result in tariffs on countries that do not prohibit the sale or importation of goods produced through coerced labor. Greer said the investigation would target roughly 60 nations.

Section 301 investigations typically take months or even years to complete. Greer said the administration intends to accelerate the process and aims to finish the probes by mid-July, when the temporary tariffs are scheduled to expire.

Additional investigations could follow in the coming weeks, Greer said, potentially targeting specific countries or policy areas. Some could focus on blocs such as the European Union, while others may address issues like digital trade policies that the U.S. considers discriminatory toward American companies.

Let’s Make a Deal

Many of the countries likely to be affected have already negotiated trade agreements with the U.S. during Trump’s second term in an effort to limit tariff exposure. Greer said he expects those agreements to remain in force, noting that trading partners had already anticipated some level of U.S. tariffs.

“The United States will no longer sacrifice its industrial base to other countries that may be exporting their problems with excess capacity and production to us. Today’s investigations underscore President Trump’s commitment to reshore critical supply chains and create good-paying jobs for American workers across our manufacturing sectors,” said Greer in a statement. 

Trump’s earlier global duties had exempted products already covered by national-security tariffs imposed under Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962. Greer said it is too early to determine whether the new Section 301 tariffs will include similar exemptions, though the administration wants to avoid creating additional compliance complexity for companies.

While Section 301 provides a stronger legal foundation than the emergency powers used for the tariffs struck down by the Supreme Court, the move is likely to face political scrutiny. Democrats have warned that new duties could raise costs for consumers during an election year.

“Section 301 tariffs are meant to address specific and legitimate unfair trade practices,” Senator Tim Kaine, a Virginia Democrat, said in a statement. “They should not be used to drag the United States back into a cost-raising, broad-based tariff regime now that the Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s illegal Ieepa taxes on American consumers.”

Companies will have until mid-April to submit comments related to the industrial overcapacity probe, Greer said, with public hearings scheduled for early May.

h/t Capital.news

Tyler Durden
Fri, 03/13/2026 – 07:45

Frankel also recently battled a bacterial infection that left her with a massive rash on her face.