Donald-ji ka tariff dhamaka: 25 percent?!!!

Written by: Aarthi Ramnath, Raghav Bikhchandani & Yash Budhwar

The daily Souk: On my shopping list

Editor’s note: As you may have noticed, we just unveiled a beta version of Souk—which has one simple goal: To help you find unique, high quality products that are worth your time and money. And to help us—the splainer team, lol! We have been happily wasting work hours browsing Souk—and thought it fun to share what made our shopping list—with me, Lakshmi, going first.

One: The House & Living section has a solid list of what I’ve long been looking for: good-looking pet-friendly carpets. Our dogs are an ongoing threat to our expensive rugs—which are a pain in the ass to clean. I am 100% eyeing this pretty velvet rug for my bedroom.

Two: The Souk work bag edit was, frankly, a revelation. I have been carrying around a ratty Muji bag for ages. I have no interest in luxury price tags, big Indian brands are kinda meh, and I’ve been dubious about smaller ones. I am officially in love with the Diving Man Highland Tote—it’s like wearing art on my arm! And I am considering the Tan & Loom laptop bag for travel.

Three: In general, I’m not fond of healthy snacks. I especially hate makhana, period. It tastes like crappy popcorn. But ever since I quit smoking, I have the munchies more than ever. So I’m planning to try the cheesy makhana wafers and/or the sour cream and onion oat variety—on the ‘clean snacking’ list.

PS: This is a beta launch and feedback—good or bad—is key. So please email the team at dearsouk@splainer.in with your thoughts. We want to get this right!

Donald-ji ka tariff dhamaka: 25 percent?!!!

The US prez announced plans to slap a sweeping 25% tariff on all imports from India. And there will be added tariffs to punish New Delhi for buying energy and military equipment from Russia. Or as Donald described us: “Russia’s largest buyer of ENERGY, along with China, at a time when everyone wants Russia to STOP THE KILLING IN UKRAINE.”

The rate is way harsher than the deal cut with our rivals like Vietnam:

A 25% tariff would be just one percentage point lower than what the president threatened India with on April 2, when he announced plans for sweeping tariffs on dozens of countries. It’s also significantly higher than the rates Mr. Trump has settled on for other Asian nations like Indonesia, the Philippines, Vietnam and Japan — all of which have been 20% or less.

Point to note: Washington also announced sanctions on at least half a dozen Indian companies accused of trading in Iranian petroleum and petrochemicals. Interestingly, prime offender Gautam Adani is not on the list.

A rude shock: This is after months of negotiations—with the Indian A-list team parked in Washington for months:

Indian negotiators appear to have underestimated the Trump administration’s desire for immediate results. Incremental offers on market access, such as softening import restrictions on US medical devices or agricultural goods, were dismissed in Washington as too little, too late and “half offers.”

New Delhi expected Trump’s enmity with China to prevail—but “Trump appears ready to decouple economic ties from strategic security cooperation.” Just last week, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal told reporters that the negotiators were “making fantastic progress.” Haw.

A big blow: Here is the potential damage in stark numbers:

The US accounts for over 17% of India’s total exports, valued at $77 billion last year. US imports totalled $40.7 billion. A 25% tariff effectively erases India’s pricing export advantage in many sectors. Total bilateral trade in 2024 hit a record $118.2 billion, with India holding a trade surplus of $36.8 billion.

The tariffs are also a crippling blow to India’s plan A—to become the ‘new China’ for multinationals looking to manufacture on the cheap overseas.

One cause for hope: “[A]ccording to tracking by Goldman Sachs, trading partners accounting for 56% of US imports — including Canada, Mexico, South Korea, Brazil and India — have not yet signed preliminary agreements.” So this great flurry of dealmaking is a little misleading.

One cause for worry: Trump’s guns are aimed squarely at all the BRICS countries: “You know they have BRICS, which is basically a group of countries that are anti The United States, and India is a member of that, if you can believe it?”

Trump has gone after each of the key members for various reasons. Russia is now in the doghouse—because Moscow won’t budge on Ukraine. Brazil just got hit with a 50% tariff—on the excuse that its prosecution of its own ex-president (Jair Bolsonaro) is some kind of economic emergency. South Africa has been saddled with a 35% rate for the ‘white genocide’ of Afrikaners.

Quote to note: The most alarming sign is that Trump doesn’t seem to really care about India very much—even as his pal Modi sweats bullets in New Delhi. Asked again about his plan for India, he said: “It doesn’t matter too much whether we have a deal or whether we charge them a certain tariff, but you’ll know at the end of this week.” The reality is that a trade war with India won’t hurt the American economy or customers much—unlike, say, with China, which will affect $700 billion in annual trade.

The big picture: The tariff rate isn’t signed and sealed as yet—but we’re getting close to the August 1 deadline—the last day to seal a bilateral deal with Washington. But dialing down that number will require significant concessions—the aim of the threat. Washington is insisting we remove trade barriers around agriculture—which will be disastrous to Indian farmers—who represent a significant voting bloc. Hence, the GoI response emphasised that “the government will take all steps necessary to secure our national interest.” There are no good choices for the ruling party.

Reading list: The Telegraph and New York Times are best on the tariff rate and what it means for India. The Hindu is good on the BRICS angle. Indian Express has more on the Indian response.

Good news about the AI effect on jobs… for non-techies!

A new report by analytics firm Lightcast shows that jobs that require AI skills pay nearly 28% more than the others—an average of $18,000 more per year. And here’s the kicker: these are not tech positions:

Lightcast found that more than half of job postings that mention AI skills — 51% as of 2024 — are now for jobs outside of IT and computer science. Even more striking: in some industries, roles that require generative AI have grown 800% since 2022.

The good news: Marketing, education, human resources, finance, and even manufacturing departments are now looking for people with basic AI literacy: Job ads in marketing and PR now mention AI 8% of the time, and AI-related roles in HR are growing by 66%, especially in hiring and analytics. The bigger picture:

Christina Inge, founder of Thoughtlight, an AI marketing service, told Fortune in a message AI isn’t just automating busywork, it’s also becoming a tool AI-fluent workers can leverage to increase their own value to a company—and to outperform their peers. Take, for example, someone in sales using AI to create more targeted conversations to close deals faster, Inge wrote. The same can be said for customer service workers.

The bad news: There is no AI upside as yet for techies:

Job postings for AI skills in tech roles remain robust, but the proportion of AI jobs within IT and computer science has fallen, dropping from 61% in 2019 to just 49% in 2024. This signals an ongoing contraction of traditional tech roles as AI claims an ever-larger share of the work.

Sigh! Maybe this is karma for all that techie jeering at arts & social science types. Fortune and Quartz have the best reporting on the Lightcast report, which can be found here.

Moving on to Meta AI: Two film companies—Strike 3 Holdings and Counterlife Media—have accused Meta of stealing at least 2,396 copyrighted porn movies since 2018. According to their lawsuit, the company used this content to train its Meta Movie Gen—and “other Meta AI Models that rely on video training content." The movies were downloaded by ‘torrenting’ pirated content:

Popular torrenting networks don't just allow users to download media files. Torrenting is a form of peer-to-peer file sharing, in which users download pieces of files from other users. The suit alleges that not only did Meta download copyrighted adult works, but that it made these files available to others, and benefited from doing so.

The last is what is called ‘seeding’ in internet jargon—sharing your file with others once it has been fully downloaded.

Why this is notable: This is new—Meta didn’t just steal porn, it is accused of distributing it—perhaps even to minors. BitTorrent rewards users who share/distribute illegally downloaded content with a "tit-for-tat" protocol. The companies allege that Meta downloaded the most attractive content—i.e. porn— “as tit-for-tat currency in order to efficiently download millions of other files from BitTorrent." That’s notable because in a separate battle over pirated books with famous authors, Meta claimed it may have downloaded the content—but “minimised” seeding, i.e. it did not distribute them. (Ars Technica)

MAP Academy fellowships alert!!

Editor’s note: As you know, the wonderful MAP Academy is our content partner for Advisory. It is one of the few Indian institutions deeply invested in cultural research and education. They also offer rare funded opportunities for researchers, designers, archivists, journalists, writers and educators. The Nalli Fellowship is one of them.

Over to MAP Academy…

We’re pleased to announce that a new cycle of the MAP Academy & Nalli Fellowships will open to applications soon. Designed to support research and practice in South Asia’s diverse textile traditions, the Fellowship is born out of a collaboration between MAP Academy and Nalli Silks, a heritage textile brand based in India.

Programme Details: Four fellowships, each with a grant of INR 5,50,000, will be awarded.

The programme is open to a wide range of people, from individuals to collectives, from researchers to practitioners. We’re hoping to receive applications on a range of subjects, and these include:

Histories of clothing and costume
Community or personal textile archives
Textiles in religious or liturgical contexts
Environmental impact of textile production and consumption
Endangered or disappearing textile traditions
Critical perspectives on revivalism
Labour in textile production, with a focus on caste, class, and gender
Textiles in relation to other cultural forms—storytelling, poetry, music, architecture, and material culture
Textiles in the context of archaeological study
Textiles as symbols or metaphors in literature or mythology
Techniques and tools used in specific textile traditions

You can read more about the Fellowships here. We will begin accepting applications starting 18th August 2025.

To register your interest and receive a reminder when applications open, please visit this link. For any queries, contact us at: fellowships@map-india.org

what caught our eye

business & tech

India’s aviation watchdog has flagged 51 safety violations at Air India over the past year—including seven serious lapses—amid renewed scrutiny of the airline following last month’s fatal Boeing 787 crash.
Say hello to ChatGPT ‘study mode’, as OpenAI partners with edtech startups in India and the US to promote AI as an educational tool.
Meta has just posted one of its strongest quarters in years, with profits soaring and its stock jumping 10%.
Sex toy startup Lovense has failed to fix security flaws that expose user email addresses and allow anyone to takeover accounts.

sports & entertainment

Ben Stokes has been ruled out of the fifth Test between England and India, as England make four changes to their lineup. Jofra Archer has also been rested.
Timothee Chalamet has inked a brand deal with Lucid, a luxury automaker responsible for a line of EVs
Indian Express profiles Hardeep Singh, a Greco-Roman wrestler who has become the first Indian world champion in the under-17 class.

health & environment

The UN is holding emergency talks over the sky-high accommodation costs to host the COP30 climate summit.
The Guardian analyses how skin-lightening products are linked to cancer cases in black African women. The reason: melanin offers protection from the sun.
Mongabay comments on the impact of rising temperatures on women’s health in India.

meanwhile, in the world

Israeli attacks killed at least 71 Palestinians on Wednesday trying to access humanitarian aid in Gaza, as hospitals also recorded seven more deaths from famine and malnutrition amid the worsening hunger crisis.
Canada plans to formally recognise Palestine at the UN General Assembly in September, joining France, the UK, and a growing list of countries backing an independent Palestinian state.
The Netherlands has declared Israel's Finance and National Security Ministers ‘persona non grata’ for inciting violence and urging ethnic cleansing in Gaza—barring their entry into the country.
Amid threats to gut federal funding, Harvard will comply with the Trump administration’s demand to turn over employment forms.
Shanghai moved over 280,000 people, cancelled flights and ferries, and slowed down road and rail traffic as Typhoon Co-May hit eastern China—just hours before the Kamchatka earthquake tsunami warning, later lifted, was issued.
Associated Press reports on how millionaires are multiplying across the US but it’s not all mansions and champagne.
Oprah Winfrey has denied viral social media claims that she blocked access to a private road on her Hawaii property during the Kamchatka earthquake tsunami warning.

meanwhile, in India

An RTI filed by The Wire has revealed that a critical aircraft safety unit within the government’s aviation watchdog—DGCA—lies half empty and vacant, with 43% of posts remaining vacant.
The NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) satellite—the first joint project of its kind between the US and India—has been launched from Sriharikota, Andhra Pradesh.
BJP Tamil Nadu chief Nainar Nagenthran has named Khushbu Sundar as the party’s State Vice President.

Five things to see

One: On Monday, a 27-year-old Shane Tamura from Las Vegas strolled into the lobby of a prestigious Park Avenue building—home to the National Football League, Blackstone and accounting firm KPMG. He shot four people including an NYPD officer, an unarmed security guard and a Blackstone executive. The building uses “an advanced, automated video surveillance system.” So it is a mystery—even to the experts—as to how he got in—unchallenged, openly carrying a high-powered M4 rifle—as you can see in this CCTV image. (Wall Street Journal)

Two: We have an excellent list of unlikely romances—some confirmed, others not. Justin Trudeau and Katy Perry were spotted dining at a high-end restaurant Le Violon in Montreal. No PDA but it is creating bigger waves than that Russian tsunami. Reminder: Perry, who is currently on tour in Canada, recently split with her long time partner Orlando Bloom and Trudeau separated from his wife in 2023. (CBC News)

Next up: The 100% confirmed jodi of Pamela Anderson and Liam Neeson—who found love on the set of ‘The Naked Gun’ (releasing this weekend). You can feel the adorable love vibes in the vid below. (People)

Last and least entertaining: Tom Cruise and Ana de Armas—who were spotted holding hands on a Vermont getaway over the weekend. See a papped photo of them below. (People)

Three: Ahead of iPhone 17 series’ launch in September, a known Apple leaker shared the dummy colours for the phones. Oh look, Orange is the new Rose Gold! Missing: the rumoured lavender option. (Tom’s Guide)

Four: Shekhar Kapur—who directed ‘Mr. India’, ‘Masoom’ and ‘Bandit Queen’ and the Oscar-winning ‘Elizabeth’—announced a sci-fi series titled ‘Warload’. The plot twist: It is a partnership with Studio Blo, a generative AI company based in Mumbai. We don’t have release dates but the trailer is below. (Variety)

Five: Here’s another tale of fine art miracles. Two years ago, a dealer bought an unusual looking painting for £150—which has turned out to be a Salvador Dali painting of a scene from The Arabian Nights—now valued at £20,000 to £30,000. Yes, it is suitably Dali-esque. The painting goes on auction in October. (BBC News)