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Donald Trump’s top trade officials are scaling back their ambitions for comprehensive reciprocal deals with foreign countries, seeking narrower agreements to avert the looming reimposition of US tariffs.

Four people familiar with the talks said US officials were seeking phased deals with the most engaged countries as they race to find agreements by July 9, when Trump has vowed to reimpose his harshest levies.

The narrower, piecemeal plan for new deals marks a retreat from the White House’s vow to strike 90 trade deals during the 90-day pause in the sweeping “reciprocal” tariffs the president announced on April 2.

But it also offers some countries a chance to strike modest agreements. The administration would seek “agreements in principle” on a small number of trade disputes ahead of the deadline, the people said.

Countries that agree these narrower deals would be spared the harsher reciprocal tariffs, but left with an existing 10 per cent levy while talks on thornier issues continue, the people said.

However, talks remain complex, and alongside its narrower approach to deals, the administration was also still considering imposing tariffs on critical sectors, people familiar with the matter said.

The twin track, involving the threat of new tariffs alongside openness to deals, underscores the difficulty facing negotiators with Trump, who has used trade as a cudgel to secure concessions from other countries.

Last week the president announced he would end trade talks with Canada, prompting Ottawa to immediately rescind a digital services tax that Washington objected to.

Trump triggered a global stock market rout in early April after imposing steep tariffs on the US’s largest trading partners, following weeks of a chaotic trade policy rollout marked by reversals and U-turns.

Although he has since walked back some of the most punitive levies, so far the US has only reached a trade pact with the UK and signed a tentative truce with China.

Foreign negotiators are now trying to understand what will come next.

The US commerce department had already launched national security probes — Section 232 investigations — into goods including copper, lumber, aerospace parts, pharmaceuticals, chips and critical minerals.

Several countries in serious trade talks with the US have sought relief from existing sectoral tariffs of 25 per cent on cars and their parts and 50 per cent on steel and aluminium.

The US’s trade deal with the UK provides a limited lower-tariff quota for British cars and pledges to negotiate other carve-outs for pharmaceuticals. The UK also won lower levies on steel and aerospace parts.

People familiar with the talks said the poor visibility of possible new sectoral tariffs the US might impose at a later date were hindering discussions.

On Monday, Treasury secretary Scott Bessent suggested the US was focused primarily on the reciprocal tariffs, and would leave sectoral levies until later.

“The Section 232s take longer to implement, so we’ll see what happens with those,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV.

It is also unclear how Trump will set any new tariff rates on countries that do not agree a new deal before the July 9 deadline.

On Monday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump was meeting with his trade team to set tariff rates for “many of these countries if they don’t come to the table in good faith”.

The president later suggested on his Truth Social account that Japan would be sent a new tariff rate, despite weeks of trade negotiations between them.

“To show people how spoiled Countries have become with respect to the United States of America, and I have great respect for Japan, they won’t take our RICE, and yet they have a massive rice shortage,” Trump wrote.

“In other words, we’ll just be sending them a letter, and we love having them as a Trading Partner for many years to come.”

Some people familiar with the talks said there was also uncertainty about whether Trump would stick to his schedule about ending his 90-day pause.

Bessent also told Bloomberg TV that any potential extensions to the July 9 deadline would be up to the president, but that he expected to see “a flurry” of deals ahead of the deadline. 

But last week the Treasury secretary told Fox News that the US was negotiating with 18 trading partners and agreements could be done during the summer.

In May, two court rulings declared Trump’s use of emergency powers to impose reciprocal tariffs unlawful. The administration has appealed, but the rulings had also injected uncertainty into talks, people familiar with the negotiations said.

The White House declined to comment.

According to the first major indictment from the District of Massachusetts, a crew of North Korean IT workers allegedly partnered with co-conspirators in New York, New Jersey, California, and overseas to steal the identities of more than 80 U.S. people, get remote jobs at more than 100 companies—many in the Fortune 500—and steal at least $5 million. According to the second indictment, a four-person team of North Korean IT workers allegedly traveled to the United Arab Emirates where they used stolen identities to pose as remote IT workers, get jobs at American companies for themselves and unnamed co-conspirators, and then systematically steal digital currency to fund North Korea’s nuclear-weapons programs, authorities claimed in the five-count federal charging document. 

The indictments lay out in detail the way the IT worker scheme has leveled up from merely relying on fake and fabricated identities, to a complex web of American-led front companies. The front companies are founded by paid accomplices and make it appear as though the IT workers are affiliated with legitimate U.S. businesses. The front runners conceal the North Korean IT workers behind stolen American identities, and offer them U.S. addresses to take shipment of laptops sent out by companies for remote software jobs. The stolen revenue generated in the fraud scheme is allegedly transferred to North Korean leadership to help fund the authoritarian regime’s weapons of mass destruction and ballistic-missile programs. 

“North Korea remains intent on funding its weapons programs by defrauding U.S. companies and exploiting American victims of identity theft, but the FBI is equally intent on disrupting this massive campaign and bringing its perpetrators to justice,” Assistant Director Roman Rozhavsky of the FBI Counterintelligence Division said in a statement. “North Korean IT workers posing as U.S. citizens fraudulently obtained employment with American businesses so they could funnel hundreds of millions of dollars to North Korea’s authoritarian regime. The FBI will do everything in our power to defend the homeland and protect Americans from being victimized by the North Korean government, and we ask all U.S. companies that employ remote workers to remain vigilant to this sophisticated threat.”

The authoritarian leadership of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) has deployed thousands of trained IT workers around the world to trick companies into hiring them for remote IT jobs, authorities said Monday. Once hired, the IT workers are tasked with making money and gathering intelligence to aid in cyber heists. Known colloquially as the “North Korean IT worker scheme,” hundreds of Fortune 500 and smaller tech companies have been battling back a tsunami of fake would-be job seekers who are actually trained North Korean IT workers. The UN has estimated the scheme generates between $200 million to $600 million per year, not including the amount of crypto allegedly stolen in heists using intelligence gathered by the North Korean IT workers, which is in the billions. 

According to the indictment, New Jersey man Zhenxing “Danny” Wang founded a software development company called Independent Lab as a front company in the scheme. Through Independent Lab, companies shipped laptops to Wang addressed to what the companies thought were hired IT workers, but in reality were people who had their identities stolen. Wang allegedly hosted the laptops at his home, known as a “laptop farm,” and installed remote-access software so the North Korean workers could access them from overseas locations. Wang also took in money paid as compensation from the U.S. companies and allegedly transferred it to accounts controlled by the overseas conspirators. 

The indictment states multiple defendants and accomplices acted using front companies, including other unnamed conspirators in New York and California, plus an active-duty member of the U.S. military. The accomplices allegedly hosted laptop farms in their homes in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees, authorities claimed. The fronts allegedly defrauded at least four major companies, causing each one at least $100,000 in damages and lost wages. One accomplice alleged to be Kejia Wang, allegedly knew the workers were acting on behalf of North Korea. 

In addition to Danny Wang, the government charged eight other defendants and claimed the fraud included a California-based defense contractor, from which an overseas actor allegedly stole sensitive documents related to U.S. military technology. Other companies impacted in the fraud scheme are located in California, Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Florida, New Mexico, Georgia, Maryland, North Carolina, Illinois, Ohio, South Carolina, Michigan, Texas, Indiana, Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Minnesota, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington, Utah, Colorado, and the District of Columbia. 

Michael “Barni” Barnhart, principal risk investigator at security firm DTEX, said the arrests announced this week serve as a reminder that the threats from DPRK IT workers extend beyond just generating revenue. 

“Once inside, they can conduct malicious activity from within trusted networks, posing serious risks to national security and companies worldwide,” Barnhart told Fortune in a statement. “DPRK actors are increasingly utilizing front companies and trusted third parties to slip past traditional hiring safeguards, including observed instances of those in sensitive sectors like government and the defense industrial base.” 

Barnhart suggests the arrests underscore the notion that companies have to look beyond the typical applicant portals and reassess their entire talent pipelines given the way the DPRK IT worker threat has adapted. 

“These schemes target and steal from U.S. companies and are designed to evade sanctions and fund the North Korean regime’s illicit programs, including its weapons programs,” Assistant Attorney General for the Department’s National Security Division John A. Eisenberg said in a statement. “The Justice Department, along with our law enforcement, private sector, and international partners, will persistently pursue and dismantle these cyber-enabled revenue generation networks.”

The second indictment outlines how the four-man delegation used a mix of stolen identities and aliases to get two North Korean IT workers developer jobs at an Atlanta, Georgia research and development tech firm, and at a separate virtual token company. 

Together, the duo stole crypto valued at nearly $1 million, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia alleged in an indictment handed down last week. The two IT workers then brought in others to help them allegedly launder the currency so they could disguise its origins before sending the money home to North Korean leadership.

‘It’s not me!!!’

As alleged in the second indictment, the scheme in this case began in October 2019 when four trained North Korean IT workers traveled to the United Arab Emirates using North Korean documents and set themselves up as a team. The crew methodically leveraged stolen identities blended with their own photos to pass muster as legitimate employees and gain access to sensitive information at the companies. The goal, according to the indictment, was to earn enough trust to get access to the virtual currencies the companies controlled so they could transfer them to the DPRK government, led by authoritarian dictator Kim Jong Un. 

Once up and running, in December 2020 defendant Kim Kwang Jim allegedly gave an unnamed company a fake Portuguese ID that included a photo of Kim with the victim’s actual birthdate and government identification number. Kim allegedly used the stolen identity as an alias to get work developing source code at an unnamed U.S. company based in Atlanta. The indictment only names the stolen ID victim as “P.S.” and does not name any company that allegedly hired a North Korean IT worker.

In March 2022, Kim allegedly modified the source code at the company where he had been hired. His changes altered the code for two smart contracts the company owned and controlled that lived on the Ethereum and Polygon blockchains. Kim triggered rule changes dictating when currency could be withdrawn from the company-controlled funding pools.

Then on March 29 and March 30, 2022, Kim allegedly took 4 million Elixir tokens, 229,051 Matic tokens, and 110,846 Start. All told, the virtual currencies were worth about $740,000 at the time of the theft, according to the indictment. Kim allegedly transferred the currency to another currency address he controlled. 

Authorities say Kim offered up a dog-ate-my-homework rationale to the founder to try to explain the currency transfer: “hi bro, really sorry – these weird txs started happening after i refactored my github.”

On March 30, the company founder sent a message on Telegram to Kim accusing him of stealing the virtual currency from the company’s funding pools. Kim, using the Telegram account set up with the P.S. stolen identity, wrote back, “How many times do I need to tell you??? I didn’t do it!!! It’s not me!!!”

‘Bryan Cho’

Another alleged incident outlined in the indictment began in May 2021. Authorities say defendant Jong Pong Ju allegedly used the alias “Bryan Cho” to get a job at another unnamed company to provide IT services. 

After he was hired, Jong allegedly gained access to the company’s virtual currency. Later that year, in October 2021, Jong allegedly used a Telegram account he had created using the “Bryan Cho” alias to recommend to the company founder that “Peter Xiao” would make a great developer. Authorities alleged Peter Xiao was actually another defendant, Chang Nam Il. The founder took Jong’s recommendation and hired “Peter Xiao” to work on front-end development. Chang, working as Peter Xiao, allegedly worked at the company from October 2021 until January 2022. 

In January 2022, the company founder asked for a video to verify the identity of “Bryan Cho”—who was actually Jong, authorities allege—before giving Jong additional access to the company’s crypto assets. On January 25, 2022, Jong allegedly used a Malaysian driver’s license with the Bryan Cho alias to send a video to the founder over Telegram. The founder then allegedly gave Jong additional access. 

The following month, Jong took that access and allegedly stole virtual currency tokens valued at approximately 60 Ether (worth $175,680 at the time) by transferring it to another virtual currency address that Jong controlled. Jong then used the Bryan Cho Telegram account to message the company founder, “I think I accidently (sic) dropped the private key into the .env sample file.” 

The founder then asked where the “.env file” was uploaded, and Jong—as Bryan Cho—told him, “Github.”

“The defendants used fake and stolen personal identities to conceal their North Korean nationality, pose as remote IT workers, and exploit their victims’ trust to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars,” U.S. Attorney Theodore S. Hertzberg said in a statement. “This indictment highlights the unique threat North Korea poses to companies that hire remote IT workers and underscores our resolve to prosecute any actor, in the United States or abroad, who steals from Georgia businesses.”

That wasn’t the end of it. From there, the North Korean IT workers allegedly needed to launder the stolen funds. 

Chang, Jong, Kim, and a fourth defendant Kang Tae Bok allegedly used additional aliases and a virtual currency mixer known as “Tornado Cash” to launder the stolen assets. Tornado Cash is a crypto mixer that essentially blurs the trail of crypto transactions.

Authorities allege Kang used the alias “Wong Shao Onn” to open an account at an unnamed virtual currency exchange using a doctored Malaysian ID with his own photo. Similarly, Chang used a faked Malaysian ID to open an account using the alias “Bong Chee Shen.”

Jong, after he allegedly stole the 60 Ether, sent the currency to Tornado Cash for mixing, the indictment states. Kim allegedly sent his stolen tokens to Tornado Cash also. The mixed funds were then withdrawn into accounts controlled by Kang and Chang, using the Wong and Bong aliases. 

Tornado Cash did not respond to a request for comment. Attempts to reach Wang were unsuccessful.

In what’s believed to be a first for a European country, Denmark is planning to give residents a copyright over their own likeness – a move that’s been called for by creative industries, including the music industry, since the rise of AI-generated deepfakes.

In a statement issued on Thursday (June 26), the Danish government said it had “broad support” from the country’s major political parties for an amendment to legislation that would give people rights over images of their facial features and body, and audio of their voice.

The proposed change will make it illegal to share deepfakes (convincing fake renderings of a person or their voice), though the law apparently will not mandate any prison or fines, but may allow for “compensation” in some circumstances, according to a report at Euronews.

The new rules are expected to make an exception for “parodies and satire.” The Danish government aims to have it in place by late this year or early 2026, and says it’s likely the first of its kind in Europe, according to The Guardian.

It’s “high time that we now create a safeguard against the spread of misinformation and at the same time send a clear signal to the tech giants,” Denmark’s Culture Minister, Jakob Engel-Schmidt, said in a statement, as quoted by Euronews.

“We are now sending an unequivocal signal to all citizens that you have the right to your own body, your own voice and your own facial features… Technology is developing rapidly, and in the future it will be even more difficult to distinguish reality from fiction in the digital world,” Engel-Schmidt added.

The proposed Danish law has echoes of legislation put forward by US states and in the federal Congress.

The NO FAKES (Nurture Originals, Foster Art, and Keep Entertainment Safe) Act was reintroduced in the US Senate in April, brought forward by a bipartisan group of senators. The bill effectively creates a right of publicity at the US federal level for the first time: individuals will be able to control the use of their own likeness and voice.

“[It’s] high time that we now create a safeguard against the spread of misinformation and at the same time send a clear signal to the tech giants.”

Jakob Engel-Schmidt, Culture Minister, Denmark

The legislation has the backing of many prominent music industry figures, including Warner Music Group CEO Robert Kyncl, who testified before Congress last year in support of the NO FAKES Act.

“Generative AI is appropriating artists’ identities and producing deepfakes that depict people doing, saying, or singing things that never happened,” Kyncl told the Senate Judiciary Committee in April 2024.

“Through AI, it is very easy for someone to impersonate me and cause all manner of havoc… They could speak to an artist in a way that could destroy our relationship. They could say untrue things about our publicly traded company to the media that would damage our business.”

Notably, besides Warner and the other recording majors – Sony Music Entertainment and Universal Music Group – the NO FAKES Act also has the backing of major tech companies and platforms, including Amazon, ChatGPT maker OpenAI, and YouTube.

Some tech companies haven’t been waiting for legislation to take action on the issue. As of last summer, YouTube’s policies have allowed people to make takedown requests of AI-generated video or audio of their likeness or voice. Last September, the Google-owned platform announced it’s working on tools to detect AI-generated faces and voices.

Individual states have also been taking on the issue, notably Tennessee – known for its prominent music industry – which last year passed the Elvis Act, which updated the state’s right of publicity law to include protections for songwriters, performers, and music industry professionals’ voices from misuse by AI.

However, that law and others like may be jeopardized by President Donald Trump and the Republican Party’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” the omnibus budget legislation that includes a clause that would prevent states from regulating AI for 10 years.

Nevertheless, given the bipartisan support for legislation cracking down on AI-generated deepfakes, a federal law is likely to emerge from Congress and get the president’s backing.

This past May, President Trump signed into law the Take It Down Act, which bans the non-consensual online publication of both AI-generated and real sexually explicit images.Music Business Worldwide

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Your guide to what Trump’s second term means for Washington, business and the world

Donald Trump’s sweeping tax and spending bill is edging closer to becoming law, as Republicans race to meet the president’s July 4 deadline — but it must still overcome a host of hurdles.

On Monday, the US Senate was preparing to vote on the “big, beautiful bill”, which would extend Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, slash healthcare and welfare spending and increase borrowing. But factional fighting within his Republican party threatens to derail the timeline.

Will the Senate approve the bill — and when?

The Senate on Monday began weighing a series of amendments to the bill in a process that was expected to drag on throughout the day. A final vote in the Senate was expected to take place late on Monday or early on Tuesday. 

Trump insisted on Monday morning that the bill was “moving along nicely”. But its progress depends on Republican leaders’ ability to win over sceptical senators. Deficit hawks in the party are concerned that the bill will increase US debt. Others worry about its deep cuts to healthcare for low-income and disabled Americans.

Two Republican senators — Rand Paul of Kentucky and Thom Tillis of North Carolina — have said they would vote against the bill. Others, including Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have also expressed concerns.

Democrats have accused Republicans of trying to rush the bill through “in the dead of night” and have sought to delay it, forcing a full reading of the 940-page bill on the Senate floor and amendments to the text.

If Republicans control Congress, why is Trump struggling to pass the bill?

Republicans hold slim majorities in both the House of Representatives and Senate, meaning a small number of lawmakers can hold up the bill.

In the Senate, where Republicans have a 53-47 majority, fiscal hawks including Paul and Johnson say the bill will further swell the US debt pile. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office has said the legislation would increase the national debt by $3.3tn by 2034.

Others, such as Tillis, have objected to its cuts to Medicaid, the government health insurance programme for people on low incomes. The bill would strip millions of people of health insurance over the next decade.

The House, where Republicans have a 220-212 majority, passed its own version of the legislation last month. But it must approve any changes made by the Senate before the legislation can be signed into law. 

A handful of Republicans in the House Freedom Caucus have already raised objections to the price tag of the Senate bill, while more moderate members oppose the Senate version’s deeper cuts to Medicaid.

Republicans in New York and New Jersey are also trying to strike an agreement on deducting more state and local taxes.

How could all this congressional wrangling be resolved?

While most bills need to clear a 60-vote “filibuster” threshold to pass the 100-member Senate, Republicans are trying to pass the “big, beautiful bill” through a special process known as budget reconciliation. This allows legislation to be approved with a simple majority of 51 votes, and a 50-50 tie could be broken by vice-president JD Vance.

After passing the Senate, the bill will need to go back to the House, probably later this week. The House only passed its version of the bill by one vote in May, so there could be more wrangling before the lower chamber approves yet another version.

If the House disagrees with the Senate bill, there are a couple of different options. The House could amend it and send it back to the Senate, where it would need yet another vote. Or the two chambers could send members to a conference committee to strike a compromise.

What happens if Congress misses Trump’s deadline?

Not much — the deadline was imposed by the White House and Republican leaders in Congress to pressure members to pass the bill. The longer they negotiate, the harder it will be to enact the legislation by July 4, the independence day holiday.

Last week, Trump appeared to concede that deadline may slip. “It’s not the end-all,” he said. “We can go longer, but we’d like to get it done by that time if possible.”

In June, a series of polls showed that the legislation was broadly unpopular. Nearly half (49 per cent) of Americans oppose the legislation, while 29 per cent favour it, according to a Pew Research poll.

“Polls show that this bill is political suicide for the Republican party,” Elon Musk, Trump’s top donor in 2024, recently posted on X.

At some point in the coming months, Congress needs to extend the debt limit for the US government to pay for accrued bills. The legislation would avoid that crisis by raising the so-called debt ceiling by $4tn or $5tn, which stands at $36.1tn.