2h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 9:52pmMarket snapshot
- ASX 200 futures: +0.1%
- Australian dollar: -0.7% to US65.40¢
- Wall Street: S&P 500: -0.5% Nasdaq: -0.5%
- Europe: FTSE: -0.4% EuroStoxx: -0.6%
- Spot gold: +0.3% to $US3,780/ounce
- Brent crude: +0.54% at $US69.65/barrel
- Iron ore:-0.2% to $US105.95/tonne
- Bitcoin: -3.6% to $US109,420
Prices current at 7:50am AEST.
Live updates on the major ASX indices:
5m agoFri 26 Sep 2025 at 12:43am
CSL down by more than 3pc at open
Biotechnology giant CSL‘s shares have gone down by more than 3% at the open, following US President Donald Trump’s announcement of 100% tariffs on pharmaceutical imports.
30m agoFri 26 Sep 2025 at 12:18am
US 100pc tariff on pharmaceutical imports from October
More information on Trump’s tariffs.
Donald Trump has said the US will impose a 100% tariff on imports of branded or patented pharmaceutical products from October 1, unless a pharmaceutical company is building a manufacturing plant in the country.
“There will, therefore, be no Tariff on these pharmaceutical products if construction has started,” President Trump said on Truth Social.
Reporting with Reuters
49m agoFri 26 Sep 2025 at 12:00am
Trump to impose new round tariffs
US President Donald Trump has announced a new round of punishing tariffs, saying the US will impose a 100% tariffs on imported branded drugs, 25% tariff on imports of all heavy-duty trucks and 50% tariffs on kitchen cabinets.
Mr Trump also said he would start charging a 30% tariff on upholstered furniture next week.
He said the new heavy-duty truck tariffs were to protect manufacturers from “unfair outside competition” and said the move would benefit companies such as Paccar-owned Peterbilt and Kenworth and Daimler Truck-owned Freightliner.
The president has launched numerous national security probes into potential new tariffs on a wide variety of products.
He said the new tariffs on kitchen, bathroom, and some furniture were due to huge levels of imports that were hurting local manufacturers.
“The reason for this is the large scale “FLOODING” of these products into the United States by other outside Countries,” Mr Trump said, citing national security concerns about US manufacturing.
Reporting with Reuters
1h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 11:35pm
More details emerge on GIM Trading
Our reporter Michael Atkin has been investigating GIM Trading, a company accused of defrauding millions of dollars from investors.
New information about the company’s offshore links raised questions about whether an overseas criminal syndicate was involved, according a private firm investigating the case.
Last week, the former public face of the company, Stephen Cubis, told the ABC he believed GIM Trading was operating a fraudulent scheme, with some Australians also saying they had lost hundreds of thousands of dollars each.
Read the latest investigation here.
1h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 11:15pm
Amazon investors unphased by $US2.5 billion fine
Jeff Bezos’ company has been told to pay $US2.5 billion ($3.8 billion) in fines and reimbursements to its customers, as it settles a case alleging it deceived its customers on Prime to get subscriptions.
It’s the US regulator’s second-biggest achieved fine. Yet Amazon shares were nearly unchanged after the news of the penalty broke.
Amazon has a market cap of … $US3.5 trillion. And the company makes $US2.5 billion in sales every 33 hours.
The US regulator alleged in its case that, between 2017 and 2022, Amazon executives rejected changes that would make its sign-up and cancellation processes clearer on Prime.
The company later adopted changes in 2022, while it was under investigation by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). The agency sued Amazon the next year.
Around 35 million Prime customers will now be eligible for payout from a $US1.5 billion fund.
As part of the settlement, Amazon has agreed to create a “clear and conspicuous” button to allow customers to decline a Prime subscription and to make it easier to cancel. But it hasn’t accepted wrongdoing.
Amazon has also agreed to more clearly disclose the terms of a subscription during enrollment and pay an independent supervisor to monitor compliance.
1h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 10:53pm
Why big AI companies could be challeged by locals
You might have noticed we’ve done a deep dive on AI this week, with a range of stories into the impacts of this technology on jobs, the economy and even whether workers are losing their jobs to automation.
Over in our tech unit, we’ve got another piece looking into the slowing pace of innovation by the highest valued companies, like OpenAi.
Here’s some of that story:
“Everyone is making the assumption the future is larger and more complex models and that’s not necessarily the case,” Nicholas Davis, co-director of the Human Technology Institute at the University of Technology Sydney, said.
Open-source AI models, publicly available and generally free to use, are closing the gap with their global proprietary rivals — at least for basic tasks.
Access to AI that can do most of the basic things we use AI for, like transcribing, drafting and summarising, is becoming more widely available.
“The big tech companies are pouring in billions of dollars … but the open-source models are not far behind,” Davis says.
2h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 10:27pm
More on the Trump order to make TikTok divest
The US President Donald Trump has just signed an executive order, with the title:“Saving TikTok while protecting national security”.
It’s all about making the app’s Chinese owner Bytedance divest its US operations, and sell it to local owners there.
Here’s some more of the order:
Accordingly, I have determined that the proposed divestiture would allow the millions of Americans who enjoy TikTok every day to continue using it while also protecting national security.
Under this Framework Agreement, TikTok’s United States application will be operated by a newly established joint venture based in the United States.
It will be majority owned and controlled by United States persons and will no longer be controlled by any foreign adversary, since ByteDance Ltd. and its affiliates will own less than 20 percent of the entity, with the remainder being held by certain investors (Investor Parties).
This new joint venture will be run by a new board of directors and subject to rules that appropriately protect Americans’ data and our national security.
2h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 10:14pm
Here’s Trump signing the TikTok order on… TikTok
Trump was brought back into power, with help from social media apps including TikTok.
His “TeamTrump” account on the Chinese-owned app was quick to upload video of him signing the executive order to “save” the app’s US operations, by making it divest.
We can’t upload toks here, but you can see it here.
(TikTok)
2h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 10:04pm
Trump signs executive order ‘saving’ TikTok
The US President Donald Trump has just signed an executive order, with the title: “Saving TikTok while protecting national security”.
There has been lots of ongoing uncertainty about the future of the Chinese-owned viral social media app in the US.
Its owner Bytedance has been threatened for years with being shut down there, over concerns about its Chinese ownership.
Now, Trump has put up a deal to sell off TikTok’s US operations. His executive order says Bytedance “will own less than 20 per cent” while the rest is to be controlled by a US “persons”.
Reportedly, the deal values US TikTok at $US14 billion ($21 billion), the first time it has been given a price tag.
Speaking to the media, Trump said he’d spoken to the Chinese President Xi Jinping, claiming:
“I spoke with President Xi. We had a good talk, I told him what we were doing, and he said go ahead with it.”
The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment, Reuters is reporting. TikTok did not immediately comment on Trump’s action.
Trump added that Michael Dell, Rupert Murdoch and “probably four or five absolutely world-class investors” would be part of the deal.
“This is going to be American-operated all the way,” he said.
The White House did not discuss how it came up with the $US14 billion valuation. TikTok’s Chinese parent, ByteDance, values itself at $US330 billion.
So will the deal go through?
3h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 9:45pm
What exactly does Oracle do?
One of the biggest losers on Wall Street overnight was a 48-year-old US company Oracle.
It recently surged in value briefly making its boss Larry Ellison the world’s richest person, surpassing Elon Musk.
Oracle makes software and hardware products, and also does cloud storage software. It has been surging on talk about its investment in buzzword, AI.
Yet there have been some cynics. Just this week, JP Morgan’s former head strategist quipped: “A rational investor must short this”.
Its stock is now down 5.5% in one session, which helped drag down the Nasdaq and overall Wall Street.
You can read more about this here!
3h agoThu 25 Sep 2025 at 9:28pm
AUD sliding as AI tech stock dives on Wall Street
Good morning! Emilia here with you for the final business blog of the week, after what has been a busy one.
US markets are down, dragged lower by the tech stock Oracle. The 48-year-old company has been surging in the last few months thanks to AI hype but now it’s down 5.5% in one session alone.
It comes after some people have been raising concerns about an AI stock bubble.
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Meanwhile, the Aussie dollar has slid back down towards 65.55 US cents thanks to a stronger greenback.
CBA reckons it risks falling further if tonight’s US inflation data has a little suprise about price hikes. It might just do, thanks to the impact of Trump’s tariffs.
“We doubt AUD/USD will test the next support at 0.6428 (50% fibbo) just yet,” CBA adds.
“The next local driver of AUD/USD is Tuesday’s Reserve Bank of Australia policy meeting where our Australian economics team expect the cash rate to remain steady at 3.6% in a straightforward decision.”