Category: 3. Business

Donald Trump hit out at Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon on Tuesday, saying the bank had been wrong to predict tariffs would hurt the economy and questioning whether Solomon should lead the Wall Street institution.

In a post on Truth Social, Trump said it was mostly foreign companies and governments absorbing the cost of his tariffs. “But David Solomon and Goldman Sachs refuse to give credit where credit is due. They made a bad prediction…on both the Market repercussion and the Tariffs themselves,” he wrote.

Trump said Solomon should maybe focus on being a DJ, a hobby Solomon abandoned some time ago, “and not bother running a major Financial Institution”.

The bank CEO is the latest corporate boss to become the target of Trump’s ire.

A Goldman Sachs spokesperson declined to comment. A spokesperson for the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Since 1 February, when Trump kicked off trade wars by slapping levies on imports from Mexico, Canada and China, at least 333 companies worldwide have reacted to the tariffs in some manner, as of Tuesday, according to a Reuters tracker.

While Trump did not specify which Goldman research he was referring to, the Wall Street bank – like many of its peers – has taken a bearish stance on Trump‘s tariffs.

In a note published on Sunday, Goldman Sachs analysts, led by chief economist Jan Hatzius, said US consumers had absorbed 22% of tariff costs through June and that figure could rise to 67% if recent tariffs continue on the same trajectory.

“I think that David should go out and get himself a new economist,” Trump wrote. Hatzius declined to comment.

In April, Goldman also warned sweeping US tariffs would weigh on global growth and prompt the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates more aggressively than previously expected.

Last week, the president demanded Intel chief Lip Bu-Tan resign due to his ties to Chinese firms, and has repeatedly targeted Apple boss Tim Cook for making US-sold iPhones outside the country.

Trump has also taken aim at other Wall Street banks, alleging, without providing evidence, that JP Morgan and Bank of America discriminated against him by refusing his deposits after his first term.

As the second quarter earnings season progresses, companies have reported a combined financial hit of $13.6bn to $15.2bn between 16 July and 8 August for the full year from Trump‘s tariffs, according to Reuters’ global tariff tracker.

 

Borealis, Dow, and Neste separately have decided to drop plans for major plastics recycling plants in Europe. The moves add to the spate of plastics recycling plant closures and bankruptcies that have taken place in the region due to plentiful, cheaper virgin plastic undercutting the price of recycled plastic.

Borealis has put on hold its plan to open a 60,000-metric-ton-(t)-per-year polyolefin mechanical recycling plant in Schwechat, Austria. The Austrian firm had aimed to open the plant by year-end. “A detailed evaluation of the project revealed that in the current market environment the plant would not meet the expected performance targets,” the company tells C&EN in an email.

Meanwhile, Dow has ditched its plan, announced in 2022, to build a 120,000-t-per-year plant to chemically recycle mixed plastic waste in Böhlen, Germany. The recycling facility was due to deploy Mura Technology’s Hydro-PRT technology, which uses supercritical steam to crack polymer bonds in plastics to form oil.

It follows Dow’s decision in July to permanently close its ethylene cracker and associated petrochemical facilities in Böhlen in 2027. Oils from the proposed plastics recycling plant would have been used as feedstock in the cracker. Dow says it is closing the cracker because of high operating costs in Europe, including the high cost of energy.

Separately, Neste and Belgian plastics supplier Ravago Manufacturing have halted plans to jointly build and operate a 55,000-t-per-year plastics-to-chemicals recycling plant in Vlissingen, the Netherlands. The plant would have used a pyrolysis technology developed by the US firm Alterra Energy.

The industry group Plastics Recyclers Europe has been warning about unfair competition for European plastics recyclers for more than a year. The group sent a letter to all European Union member governments in May stating that the sector “is facing a deepening crisis that requires political action.” Prices for virgin materials remain much lower, demand for recycled content is weak, and third-country—including Chinese—competition is intensifying, the group states.

Europe produces more than 20 million t per year of ethylene, a key raw material for polymers. The region also recycles about 10 million t of plastic each year. Recycling plastic mechanically saves about 2.5 t of carbon dioxide for each 1 t of plastic produced compared with the production of virgin plastic from oil, according to European recycling association EuRIC.

CrowdStrike recognized for delivering the most innovative and complete platform for SaaS security, earning the highest scores in Key Features and Business Criteria among all evaluated vendors

AUSTIN, Texas – August 12, 2025 – CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD) today announced it is the only vendor named both a Leader and an Outperformer in the 2025 GigaOm Radar Report for SaaS Security Posture Management (SSPM). The report recognized CrowdStrike as the most innovative and complete Platform Play, with the highest scores among all vendors in Key Features and Business Criteria. CrowdStrike earned perfect 5/5 scores across critical evaluation areas, including SaaS Support, Policy Management, Third-Party Risk Assessment, Identity Threat Detection and Response, Enterprise Security Infrastructure Integration, Scalability, Cost, and Ecosystem.

This recognition underscores the competitive advantage of CrowdStrike’s unified approach to SaaS security, securing every identity – human, non-human, and AI agent – to stop SaaS breaches and prevent cross-domain attacks. GigaOm highlighted that “CrowdStrike’s single-platform architecture is comprehensive, consolidating SSPM, SaaS DLP, cloud security, identity security, and endpoint protection into a single console, enabling automated, real-time policy responses to swiftly stop attacks.”

Adversaries increasingly exploit trusted identities to infiltrate organizations undetected, making SaaS environments a top target. With hundreds of SaaS applications in use across enterprises, even minor misconfigurations or excessive permissions create entry points for infiltration and lateral movement. At the same time, the explosion of AI agents in SaaS environments is rapidly expanding the attack surface, with more identities holding persistent, high-risk privileges that adversaries can exploit across identity, endpoint, and cloud systems. To address this emerging risk, CrowdStrike recently expanded Falcon Shield support for OpenAI’s ChatGPT Enterprise Compliance API, enabling visibility and governance over autonomous GPT-based agents like Codex and custom GPTs.

The AI-native CrowdStrike Falcon® platform delivers the unified protection organizations need to secure this modern threat landscape. CrowdStrike Falcon® Shield delivers complete SaaS Security Posture Management, protecting identities, configurations, and data across SaaS applications. Combined with Falcon® Identity Protection and Falcon® Cloud Security, CrowdStrike secures every human and non-human identity – from initial access to privilege escalation and lateral movement – across SaaS, cloud, and on-prem environments.

CrowdStrike Falcon platform differentiators recognized by GigaOm include:

• Complete SaaS Visibility: GigaOm emphasized that Falcon Shield discovers SaaS applications and provides “visibility into SaaS threats, including misconfigured apps, excessive permissions, identity compromise, and unauthorized data access,” with over 175 pre-built integrations. 
• Automated Threat Response: GigaOm highlighted Falcon® Fusion, CrowdStrike’s no-code SOAR engine, for delivering “automated, real-time policy responses,” such as “disabling users or revoking OAuth app access” to contain threats before they escalate.
• GenAI and Autonomous Agent Control: CrowdStrike provides comprehensive protection for GenAI, AI agents, and embedded AI tools in SaaS environments. GigaOm noted that CrowdStrike is enhancing these capabilities through Charlotte AI, with “GenAI tools that can monitor SaaS applications, enforce standards, manage AI settings to prevent data leakage, and identify shadow AI apps.”
• Power of the Platform: GigaOm noted that CrowdStrike “delivers a comprehensive platform for those wishing to consolidate SSPM into a broader stack, including endpoint management, ITDR, and other SaaS-related security disciplines, all of which can be covered by the extensive Falcon platform.”

“Modern attacks frequently start with adversaries exploiting fragmented identity controls across SaaS, cloud, and endpoint environments to gain access, escalate privileges, and move laterally, often without detection,” said Elia Zaitsev, chief technology officer at CrowdStrike. “SaaS has become one of the most exposed and least governed layers of the enterprise. Attempting to secure it in isolation leaves gaps adversaries can exploit. Organizations need a unified platform that correlates identity, configuration, and behavioral signals across security domains to deliver real-time protection. GigaOm’s recognition validates CrowdStrike’s leadership in delivering that platform purpose-built to protect every identity across the modern attack surface.”

To learn more about the 2025 GigaOm Radar Report for SSPM, visit here and read our blog.

About CrowdStrike

CrowdStrike (NASDAQ: CRWD), a global cybersecurity leader, has redefined modern security with the world’s most advanced cloud-native platform for protecting critical areas of enterprise risk – endpoints and cloud workloads, identity and data.

Powered by the CrowdStrike Security Cloud and world-class AI, the CrowdStrike Falcon® platform leverages real-time indicators of attack, threat intelligence, evolving adversary tradecraft and enriched telemetry from across the enterprise to deliver hyper-accurate detections, automated protection and remediation, elite threat hunting and prioritized observability of vulnerabilities.

Purpose-built in the cloud with a single lightweight-agent architecture, the Falcon platform delivers rapid and scalable deployment, superior protection and performance, reduced complexity and immediate time-to-value.

CrowdStrike: We stop breaches.

Learn more: https://www.crowdstrike.com/

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© 2025 CrowdStrike, Inc. All rights reserved. CrowdStrike and CrowdStrike Falcon are marks owned by CrowdStrike, Inc. and are registered in the United States and other countries. CrowdStrike owns other trademarks and service marks and may use the brands of third parties to identify their products and services.

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CrowdStrike Corporate Communications

press@crowdstrike.com

Elon Musk has threatened legal action against Apple on behalf of his artificial intelligence startup xAI, accusing the iPhone maker of favoring OpenAI and breaching antitrust regulations in managing the rankings in its App Store. The posts elicited snide responses from Sam Altman, the OpenAI CEO, and began a spat between the two former business partners on X.

“Apple is behaving in a manner that makes it impossible for any AI company besides OpenAI to reach #1 in the App Store, which is an unequivocal antitrust violation. xAI will take immediate legal action,” Musk said in a post on X.

In a post earlier that day, he wrote: “Hey @Apple App Store, why do you refuse to put either X or Grok in your ‘Must Have’ section when X is the #1 news app in the world and Grok is #5 among all apps? Are you playing politics?”

OpenAI’s ChatGPT currently holds the top spot in the App Store’s “Top Free Apps” section in the US, while xAI’s Grok ranks fifth. Apple has a partnership with OpenAI that integrates ChatGPT into iPhones, iPads and Macs. Apple and xAI did not provide comment.

Altman responded to Musk on X: “This is a remarkable claim given what I have heard alleged that Elon does to manipulate X to benefit himself and his own companies and harm his competitors and people he doesn’t like.” Musk has bent X’s algorithmic recommendations to favor his own tweets, according to multiple reports.

Altman and Musk founded OpenAI together in 2015, but Musk left the startup and rescinded funding in 2018 after proposing to take it over, a petition other executives rebuffed. Musk has since sued the company twice over its planned transition to a for-profit enterprise, alleging “deceit of Shakespearean proportions”. Altman has cast Musk as a bitter and petty ex-partner who was jealous of the company’s success after departing.

Musk replied to Altman’s tweet: “You got 3M views on your bullshit post, you liar, far more than I’ve received on many of mine, despite me having 50 times your follower count!”

Altman replied to Musk multiple times, first calling his lack of views a “skill issue”, then “or bots”, and then offered a legal question of his own: “Will you sign an affidavit that you have never directed changes to the X algorithm in a way that has hurt your competitors or helped your own companies? i will apologize if so.”

Users on X – through the community notes feature – have pointed out that a few apps besides OpenAI have taken the top spot on the App Store this year.

Chinese AI app DeepSeek reached the No 1 spot on the platform in January, while in July, Perplexity took first place in India’s App Store – both occurring after the OpenAI and Apple partnership struck last year.

One user asked X’s native AI, Grok, who was right in the feud. The chatbot replied: “Based on verified evidence, Sam Altman is right.”

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Musk’s comments come as regulators and rivals intensify scrutiny of Apple’s control over its App Store.

Earlier this year, Apple was ordered to pay a fine of €500m ($581.15m) by the EU antitrust enforcer, which said the company’s restrictions prevented developers from steering users outside the App Store.

The US Department of Justice filed an antitrust lawsuit against Apple in early 2024, accusing the iPhone maker of creating and maintaining “broad, sustained, and illegal” smartphone monopoly.