Good morning. The Trump administration resurrected its global tariffs by shining a light on forced labor. The tariffs face a court challenge, but the spotlight isn’t going away, Risk Journal’s Richard Vanderford reports. (free link)

After the U.S. Supreme Court in February shot down President Trump’s global tariffs—which relied on emergency economic powers—the administration turned to a new theory to partially revive them, accusing America’s trade partners of failing to take action against forced labor.

• Pretext: Critics of the novel theory, including Democratic attorneys general and governors in more than two dozen states, last week asked a New York-based federal court to invalidate the new tariffs. The Trump administration turned to forced labor as a pretext, they argued.

• Trading partners respond: Regardless of the administration’s motivations, after the U.S. unveiled its forced-labor tariffs, a number of U.S. trading partners began to beef up their own legal regimes. Increased global scrutiny on supply chains is likely to continue no matter what the U.S. Court of International Trade decides.

• “There’s more eyes,” said Luis Lozano, the former president of Toyota’s Mexico unit and who now serves as chief executive of Mexico City-based advisory Odysseus Business Intelligence. “And there’s certain words as a global company you don’t want combined with your brand. One is ‘forced labor.’”

• See also: G-20 Fails to Agree on Forced Labor as U.S., Mexico and Argentina Go It Alone (free link)

Wells Fargo faces regulator probe over efforts to boost Black homeownership.

Trump administration housing officials are launching an investigation into Wells Fargo over programs and commitments the bank made over nearly a decade to increase homeownership among Black Americans.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development on Wednesday sent Wells Fargo Chief Executive Charlie Scharf a letter saying it would examine whether the bank violated fair-lending laws by favoring Black or other minority homeowners, according to a copy viewed by The Wall Street Journal. Wells Fargo didn’t have an immediate comment Wednesday.

Regulators investigate potential anticompetitive conduct in agricultural equipment markets.

The Federal Trade Commission and U.S. Department of Agriculture have launched a probe into potential anticompetitive practices in the agricultural equipment markets, sending shares for farming machine makers lower.

The regulators on Wednesday said they opened a joint public inquiry seeking information into the manufacturing and distribution markets for agricultural equipment amid a growing number of complaints to the USDA.

• Since he became Treasury secretary in early 2025, Scott Bessent has dressed down senior advisers and junior staffers alike over issues large and small, according to more than a dozen current and former Treasury officials.

• The U.K.’s High Court ruled companies can’t use sanctions designations to walk away from contracts with counterparties, Anwar Faruqi reports for Risk Journal. (free link)

• British antitrust authorities said Brink’s Co. offer to sell off some parts of its business should address concerns over the ATM operator’s planned $4 billion acquisition of rival NCR Atleos, paving the way for the regulator to give the deal the green light.

• As more organizations embrace artificial intelligence, they need to ensure they are getting genuine productivity out of the technology—and not just “a load of AI slop,” said Standard Chartered’s Tien Nguyet Long.

• The “whipsaw” of crude prices—sparked by the Iran war and Russia’s war on Ukraine—has been hard for Asian countries to traverse as energy markets react to geopolitical winds and government announcements, said Alvin Chang, chief operating officer for Singapore GasCo.

• Companies writing contracts are starting to account for the 50% rule for exports despite the rule not yet being implemented, former U.S. Commerce Department official Chris Chamberlain, now a partner at law firm Morrison Foerster, said.

The yield on 10-year notes the U.S. Treasury auctioned on Wednesday, marking the highest yield since November 2000.

OpenAI’s ChatGPT for Teens poses ‘unacceptable risk,’ nonprofit says.

ChatGPT’s guardrails for underage users fall short of OpenAI’s commitments to child safety, a nonprofit group said Wednesday, designating the company’s ChatGPT for Teens offering as an “Unacceptable Risk.”

The Youth AI Safety Institute, part of the nonprofit Common Sense Media, called on the artificial-intelligence lab to restrict usage of ChatGPT to people over the age of 18 until it can improve the guardrails.

Fed minutes signal further rate increase this year, but no urgency for October hike.

When Federal Reserve officials met to raise interest rates last month, most expected a further increase later this year, but minutes of the meeting, published Wednesday, didn’t show that policymakers made an urgent case that such a follow-on move should come at the next meeting in October.

• A large-scale Russian missile and drone attack killed at least 24 people across Ukraine early on Wednesday, including four children.

• Audio recordings capture months of warnings, confusion and attacks in the U.S. blockade on Iranian oil exports.

• South Korean officials said North Korea almost certainly