Reuters World News - National Guard in DC, US-China trade, Alaska and Nvidia

Episode Date: August 12, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump is to deploy 800 National Guard troops to Washington temporarily taking over the capital's police department. The view of Alaskans ahead of President Trump’s talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin. And Trump suggests U.S. chipmaker Nvidia may be allowed to sell a scaled down version of its advanced GPU chip in China - amid a pushback against the company in Beijing. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter here. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast here. Find the Recommended Read here. Visit the Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Today, President Trump deploys the National Guard in Washington, D.C. to combat crime. The U.S. and China extend their trade truce, as Trump opens the door to sales of a version of NVIDIA's next-gen AI chips in China. And Anchorage prepares for Putin and Trump. It's Tuesday, August 12th. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes every single day. I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand.

I'm announcing a historic action to rescue our nation's capital from crime, bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse. U.S. President Donald Trump is deploying 800 National Guard troops to Washington, D.C., to combat what he says is a wave of lawlessness. This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we're going to take our capital back. We're taking it back. The government will also take temporary control of the police force, overseen by Attorney General Pam Bondi. Numbers show violent crime did shoot up in D.C. in 2023, but have been rapidly declining since.

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser striking a diplomatic tone in her response. And while this action today is unsettling and unprecedented, I can't say that given some of the rhetoric of the past, that were totally surprised. Trump also vowed to remove homeless encampments without providing details on how or where homeless people would be moved. Reporters, Trevor Hunnicott and Steve Holland are in D.C.

Steve, President Trump has also signalled that other major cities could be next, including Chicago. How major is all of this? Well, this is an extraordinary assertion of presidential power, something that we're rarely going to see. What's behind this, President Trump wants to see himself as a law and order.

President, you'll notice that a lot of these policies here he is pursuing in big cities that are run by Democrats. If he can put pressure on Democrats, expose them as he would feel like he's exposing them as weak on crime. It could help Republican candidates in the midterm elections in 2026 when Republicans would typically lose seats in Congress with the president in power. Trevor, hundreds of offices and federal agents have already fanned out across the city in recent days. How long could they stay? It's not clear how long this policy is going to last. Under the Home Rule Act that the president invoked in order to take control of the DC Police Department, that is a 30-day initial time frame.

He may need action from Congress to extend that further. And the National Guard deployments, those might be pulled back as the military finds other things. things to do, other things that it needs to do with those personnel. Meanwhile, the trial over Trump's decision to send National Guard troops to Los Angeles back in June is underway. They were sent there because of protests over mass immigration raids. However, a judge has heard that the troops were sent despite intelligence assessments showing little danger.

The administration says troops there were protecting federal property and ICE agents and were not used in civil law enforcement. President Trump says he's nominating economist to E.J. Anthony as the new commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It comes 10 days after he fired the agency's previous leader, accusing her of manipulating job market figures. Anthony is the chief economist of Conservative Think Tank Heritage Foundation and contributed to Project 2025, a controversial conservative plan to overhaul. the government. President Trump has signed an executive order to extend the tariff truce with

China for another 90 days. The move puts a 30% tariff on Chinese goods coming into the US, rather than the threatened 145%, while US products going the other way will pay 10% rather than the threatened 125%. The extension buys crucial time for imports in preparation for Christmas. And staying with China-US relations, President Trump is suggesting U.S. chipmaker, NVIDIA, may be allowed to sell a scaled-down version of its advanced GPU chip in China. That's despite fears Beijing could use it to supercharge its military and leapfrog ahead of America in the AI race. But China's relationship with NVIDIA has just got a little messier. As Brenda Goh in Shanghai explains, state media there has blasted the chipmaker's popular

H2O processes over security concerns. I think that may be one of the simplest way to explain is that NVIDIA makes the most powerful AI chips on Earth. China wants to buy these chips because it wants to stay competitive against the US in the AI race. But at the same time, China wants to build its own domestic chip makers. It wants to be self-sufficient. It doesn't want to rely on NVIDIA's chips

because they are ultimately a US product. There is this self-sufficiency push that China has been campaigning for over the last couple of years, but also they have been in the last couple of weeks warnings from Chinese authorities and Chinese state media saying that they believe that NVIDIA's ships carry security risks. And what does the US gain if NVIDIA can sell a version of its advanced chip in China? I mean, I think it's also just about competitiveness. In his speech, Trump was saying that the H20, the current chip that's allowed to be sold, is absolute. And China is making its own versions that are equally powerful.

Might very soon be more powerful than the current version that's being allowed to be sold to China. So if you allow a lower scale blackwell into the China, then the argument is that that will keep the video in the game. Trust in US data is key and will be tested with US inflation data out later today. Markets are bracing for the consumer price index, which will shape expectations for federal reserve interest rate cuts. Easing inflation could strengthen expectations for a rate cut next month. However, if evidence surfaces that Trump's tariffs are driving up prices, the central bank may opt to hold steady for now. Meanwhile, news of the China-U.S. Trade Troose extension is buoying Asian stocks, with Japan's Nikai climbing to a record high powered by tech shares after returning

from a long weekend break. Anchorage, Alaska is gearing up to host Russia's president Vladimir Putin when he and President Trump meet there on Friday to discuss the war in Ukraine. It'll be the first time a Russian president has visited since Russia sold the state to the U.S. in 1867. Residents like Pam Kravaz and Tyler Wilson have mixed feelings. I was just really sad that these two people think that they can have the kind of impact that they have on the world, that they're doing it here as kind of an insult to Alaska.

I think it's an interesting meeting, although I think that Trump continuing to be involved and to back the Ukrainian, it seems counter to his stated goals of being America first. Ukraine's President Zelensky will not be at the talks. And European allies worry President Trump may agree to unfavorable terms for Kiev. Don Duffy is our foreign policy editor. Don, how might Putin and Trump's relationship impact things here? The last time they met was in 2018 in Helsinki, and a lot of people in the United States were quite surprised to see how chummy the two of them were.

And that was the time when Trump seemed to suggest that he was prepared to take Putin's word on election interference over that of his own intelligence agencies. And since then, he's generally said pretty favorable things about Putin. until pretty recently, stemming from his frustration with Russia's unwillingness to end the conflicts in Ukraine and has gone as far to threaten sanctions and to promise new weapons for Ukraine that the Europeans would pay for. And the question now is, is it this tougher version of the Trump-Puton relationship that we'll see on Friday? Or is it the original softer, chumnier relationship.

Taylor Swift has announced her 12th studio album. She revealed the release of The Life of a Showgirl in a podcast episode with her boyfriend, Travis Kelsey, and his brother Jason. The official release date will be announced later. For today's recommended read, a special report on the drive towards clean jet fuel. Nearly 20 years after the first commercial flight

powered partly by biofuels made the short hop from London to Amsterdam, Reuters has found that the airline industry's plans to go green before regulators start penalising them are little more than a pipe dream. There's a link in the pod description. For more on any of the stories from today, check out Reuters.com or the Reuters app. Don't forget to follow us on your favourite podcast player.

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