Andrew here. President Trump has made deals with Nvidia and AMD to take 15 percent of their A.I. chip sales to China. It is a surprising new twist in the narrative around national security and tariffs. Depending on your perspective, this is a new form of industrial policy or some form of extortion. What do you think? Let us know.

Also on Monday: I discuss on “The Daily” why the markets have held up better than expected as higher tariffs go into effect — and how C.E.O.s are reacting.

The Trump chip commission

As President Trump has waged trade wars around the globe, he has said that his goal is to establish American superiority in international commerce and in key areas like artificial intelligence.

But news that his administration struck a deal in which Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices agreed to pay the U.S. 15 percent of what they make in selling A.I. chips to China in exchange for export licenses raises key questions. What is Trump’s actual end goal when it comes to trade? And is his approach putting Washington’s lead in A.I. — and national security — at risk?

The TL;DR: Nvidia’s C.E.O., Jensen Huang, met with Trump at the White House on Wednesday and agreed to fork over a portion of sales of H20 processors; the Commerce Department granted the licenses two days later, The Times reports. (AMD reached a similar agreement for its MI308 chip.)

Huang had called for Nvidia to be allowed to do more business with China, warning that Chinese rivals like Huawei would otherwise take market share.

The highly unusual move could mean big numbers: Nvidia is expected to sell more than $15 billion worth of H20 chips through the end of the year and AMD about $800 million worth of MI308 processors, according to Bernstein Research. That could yield more than $2 billion in revenue to the U.S. government.

What is the policy trying to accomplish? It’s a question that has also been raised by the tariff barrage, which was often described as a way to rebalance global trade — but has also been cited as a way to generate revenue. (“The good news is that Tariffs are bringing Billions of Dollars into the USA!” the president said recently on social media.)

Trump’s approach worries China hawks. They’re concerned that allowing Chinese companies to get even lesser chips like the H20 could still bolster America’s main rival in a key technology, especially one highly useful for military applications. And that it could lead to Beijing making similar demands on other companies to loosen restrictions.

“What’s next — letting Lockheed Martin sell F-35s to China for a 15 percent commission?” Liza Tobin, who previously served as China director at the National Security Council during the Trump and Biden administrations, told The Financial Times.

A bigger test of Trump’s approach to China looms: The F.T. reports that Beijing has pressed Washington to relax export restrictions on high-bandwidth memory chips, which were imposed last year by the Biden administration. Experts say that resuming those sales could help Huawei and other Chinese companies eventually produce chips whose performance rivals Nvidia’s.

Remember that sky-high tariffs on China are set to take effect tomorrow, though Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said last week that a 90-day delay was probable. With pressure building on the Trump administration to reach a trade deal with China and with Nvidia potentially setting a precedent of companies paying for export licenses, what will the president do?

HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING

A potential Trump-Putin summit scrambles geopolitics. Oil prices fell on Monday in anticipation of a potential face-to-face meeting on Friday in Alaska between President Trump and Vladimir Putin of Russia — Vice President JD Vance said on Sunday that negotiations were underway to also include President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine — with the White House hoping to broker an end to the conflict in Ukraine. A number of challenges await, however, including European leaders jockeying for influence and recently frayed ties between Trump and Putin.

Bill Ackman suggests merging Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In a social media post on Sunday, the billionaire financier — who has been invested in the government-controlled mortgage giants for more than a decade — said putting them together could help lower mortgage rates and reduce their operating costs. His post comes after news reports that the Trump administration plans to take Fannie and Freddie public again.

Earnings reports and economic data are the focus this week. The main event for investors will probably be tomorrow’s Consumer Price Index report (more on that below). But keep an eye on the Producer Price Index on Thursday, and retail sales and the University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey on Friday. Deere and Applied Materials, the semiconductor equipment manufacturer, report results on Thursday, with analysts likely to ask about tariffs’ effects on their businesses.

Renewed concerns about inflation

Economists have warned for months about the looming effect of tariffs on inflation. Yet that is not fully reflected in months of economic data, prompting President Trump to boast recently that “we’ve had no inflation” at all.

That puts extra focus on tomorrow’s Consumer Price Index report. Concerns are growing that the trade war is forcing companies to slow investment and pull back on hiring, as this month’s lousy jobs report indicates.

A hot reading could reignite fears of stagflation — or the dynamic of rising inflation and slowing growth — and could weigh on the Fed’s thinking about interest rates, Danielle Kaye reports.

What economists expect:

• Overall inflation last month most likely rose 2.8 percent year over year, according to estimates by FactSet.

• Cheaper oil prices may offer some relief, but economists warn that the tariff effects on inflation will be easy to spot, especially in prices for used cars and home furnishings.

• Core C.P.I., which excludes volatile food and fuel prices, is expected to have risen by 3 percent on an annualized basis, well above the Fed’s 2 percent target.

Tariffs are likely to weaken spending power. Companies are expected to increasingly pass on the higher costs of levies to consumers in the coming months, Goldman Sachs economists say. Earnings calls last week underscored this, with corporate leaders saying that lower-income households were already feeling the pinch.

“Trade and fiscal policy will reinforce the bifurcated consumer,” Ryan Sweet, the chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics, wrote in a report last week, adding it would reduce “real disposable income by 2.5 percent to 3 percent” for the poorest Americans.

A lot is riding on this report. The odds of a September rate cut have jumped to roughly 90 percent in the futures market, a sharp increase that began after the Aug. 1 jobs report. That release, issued by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, included significant downward revisions to hiring numbers in May and June, which economists saw as the clearest sign yet that the president’s protectionist policies could hurt the economy.

But Trump, without evidence, called the data “rigged,” and fired Erika McEntarfer, the bureau’s commissioner, spooking longtime market watchers. Might Trump apply more pressure on the statistics agency, which also compiles the C.P.I. data, if tomorrow’s report isn’t to his liking?

At the same time, economists think the Fed will lower rates in any case. “Recent weakness in labor market data likely raises the bar for what would be considered ‘too strong’ inflation that would prevent Fed officials from cutting rates,” Veronica Clark, an economist at Citigroup, wrote in a research note on Friday.

“I just graduated with a computer science degree, and the only company that has called me for an interview is Chipotle.”

— Manasi Mishra, who graduated from Purdue University in May without a job offer, in a TikTok video that has since racked up more than 147,000 views. She’s one of many recent college graduates who followed yearslong advice to pursue coding as a career, only to see the rise of A.I.-driven programming tools wipe out much of the demand for entry-level roles in the field.

The cost of a potential clemency deal

The crypto industry has soared during the second Trump administration, with Bitcoin trading above $121,000 on Monday, near a record. That’s provided a financial windfall for the president, his family and others in his orbit.

Now, Changpeng Zhao, a Chinese-born founder of the crypto exchange Binance who pleaded guilty in 2023 to money-laundering violations, is hoping for a pardon from President Trump. The stakes are huge — clemency for Zhao could help Binance win regulatory licenses to operate in the U.S. — and has led the fallen mogul to deploy a highly sophisticated lobbying operation.

That campaign has included Binance steering business to World Liberty Financial, one of the Trump family’s crypto businesses that has already drawn criticism for potential conflicts of interest. (Zhao has dismissed suggestions that the dealings are related to his pardon push.) And leading Zhao’s operations is Teresa Goody Guillén, a partner at the law firm BakerHostetler with crypto connections throughout the Trump orbit.

More from The Times’s Kenneth Vogel and David Yaffe-Bellany:

Since February, according to lobbying filings, her firm has been paid at least $220,000 by Binance and Mr. Zhao to press the White House for “executive relief” and to lobby Congress, the S.E.C. and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission for the company on “issues relating to digital assets and cryptocurrency.”

Ms. Guillén also represents World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto business, and its co-founder Zach Witkoff, the son of Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s longtime friend and peace envoy.

In April, Mr. Zhao posed for a photograph at a crypto event in Abu Dhabi with Zach Witkoff. Days later, Mr. Witkoff announced that Binance had chosen World Liberty to process a $2 billion investment the exchange was about to receive from an Emirati investment fund.

But critics of a potential pardon for Zhao say it would be evidence of a potentially troubling situation: “It provides a gold-plated path to additional deals,” Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, told The Times. And some executives at rival crypto companies privately say they’re frustrated by the prospect of clemency, given that Zhao isn’t American and that Binance admitted to breaking the law.

THE SPEED READ

Deals

• “Billions Flow to New Hedge Funds Focused on AI-Related Bets” (WSJ)

• S4 Capital, the marketing company founded by the veteran ad executive Martin Sorrell after he left WPP, confirmed that it was in talks to sell itself to a rival, MSQ Partners. (FT)

Tech and artificial intelligence

• “Big Tech’s next major political battle may already be brewing in your backyard” (Politico)

• After 34 years of often improbable survival, AOL’s dial-up internet service — which, yes, is still around — will finally end next month. (PC Gamer)

Best of the rest

• Some of Mark Zuckerberg’s neighbors say the tech mogul has turned their affluent Palo Alto, Calif., enclave into his own personal Monopoly board after he bought a string of properties to build a compound and a private school for his children. (NYT)

• The U.N.’s butter price index is at a record high — and that could give food companies indigestion. (FT Lex)

• “How Warby Parker Has Kept the Price of Glasses at $95 for 15 Years” (WSJ)

We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com.