Business

Trump finally meets Claudia Sheinbaum face to face at the FIFA World Cup draw

Published

3 hours ago

December 6, 2025

Their long-delayed first face-to-face discussion focused on next year’s World Cup — and included side discussions about trade and tariffs — but immigration was not the top issue. That’s despite Trump’s push to crack down on the U.S.-Mexico border being a centerpiece of his administration, and the driving force in the relations between both countries.

Trump has been in office for more than 10 months, and his having taken so long to see Sheinbaum in-person is striking given that meeting with the leader of the country’s southern neighbor is often a top priority for U.S. presidents.

Trump and Sheinbaum had been set to meet in June on the sidelines of the Group of Seven summit in Canada, but that was scrapped after Trump rushed back to Washington early amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran.

Soccer took center stage — but tariffs still loom large

Trump and Sheinbaum sat talking in the president’s box and also appeared onstage with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney at the Kennedy Center for Friday’s 2026 World Cup draw. The U.S., Mexico and Canada are co-hosting the tournament, which begins in June.

A senior White House official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private meetings, said Trump, Sheinbaum and Carney met privately after participating in the draw.

Sheinbaum had said before leaving Mexico that she’d talk to Trump about tariffs that his administration has imposed on automobiles, steel and aluminum from Mexico, among other things. She said after appearing at the Kennedy Center that the three leaders “talked about the great opportunity that the 2026 FIFA World Cup represents for the three countries and about the good relationship we have.”

“We agreed to continue working together on trade issues with our teams,” Sheinbaum posted on X.

Mexico is the United States’ largest trading partner. The the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement which Trump forged in his first term as a replacement for 1994’s North American Free Trade Agreement also remains in place. But U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer has begun scrutinizing it ahead of a joint review process set for July.

In the meantime, the U.S. and Mexico’s priorities have been reshaped by the steep drop in the number of people crossing into the U.S. illegally along its southern border, as well as the White House’s — so far largely unrealized — threats to impose large trade tariffs on its neighbor.

Before speaking in-person, Trump and Sheinbaum had repeatedly talked by phone, discussing tariffs and Mexican efforts to help combat the trafficking of fentanyl into the U.S. But despite other world leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, having already met with Trump this term, the meeting with Sheinbaum hadn’t happened until Friday.

The Trump whisperer?

Waiting so long to meet in person hasn’t seemed to hurt Mexico’s president’s standing with Trump.

The two spoke by phone in November 2024, with the then-U.S. president-elect declaring afterward that they’d agreed “to stop Migration through Mexico” — even as Sheinbaum suggested her country had already been doing enough.

Trump soon after taking office threatened to impose a 25% tariff on goods imported from Mexico in an effort to force that country to better combat fentanyl smuggling, only to later agree to a pause.

The White House subsequently backed off tariff threats against most Mexican goods. Then, in October, Sheinbaum announced that the U.S. had given her country another extension to avoid sweeping 25% tariffs on goods it imports to the U.S. — even as many items covered by the USMCA trade deal remain exempt.

Mexico, though, hasn’t avoided all U.S. tariffs. Sheinbaum’s country continues to try to negotiate its way out of import levies Trump has imposed worth 25% on the automotive sector and 50% on steel and aluminum.

Sheinbaum’s success at mitigating many tariffs, and other successes in the bilateral relationship, has led some to wonder if she has a special gift for getting what she wants from him.

She’s largely pulled it off by affording Trump the respect the U.S. president demands from leaders around the world — but especially a neighboring country — and by deploying occasional humor and pushing back, always respectfully, when necessary.

Sheinbaum also defused another potential point of contention, Trump’s renaming of the Gulf of Mexico to the “Gulf of America,” by proposing dryly that North America should be renamed “América Mexicana,” or “Mexican America.” That’s because a founding document dating from 1814 that preceded Mexico’s constitution referred to it that way.

Still, Mexican officials continue to work furiously to lessen the trade blow from tariffs going into 2026 — levies that could wreck its already low-growth economy, particularly in its all-important automotive sector. Sheinbaum’s government has also sought to defend its citizens living in the U.S. as the Trump administration expands its mass deportation operations.

Sheinbaum’s government also lobbied unsuccessfully against a 1% U.S. tax on remittances, or money transfers that millions of Mexicans send home every year from the United States. It was approved as part of Trump’s tax cut and spending package and takes effect Jan. 1.

Trump’s push for mass deportations

Trump has directed federal officials to prioritize major deportation pushes in Democratic-run cities — an extraordinary move that lays bare the politics of the issues. He’s also deployed the National Guard in an effort to curb crime, which has led to a spike in immigration-related arrests, in places like Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington, as well as Memphis, Tennessee, and Portland, Oregon.

The Trump administration says its priority is targeting “the worst of the worst” criminals, but most of the people detained in operations around the country have not had violent criminal histories.

Such operations often meant targeting Mexican citizens who have lived and worked in the United States for years and may face deportation to a homeland they no longer know well. It also has meant serious threats of declining remittance income, which has fallen for seven consecutive months.

The lower number of illegal U.S.-Mexico border crossings has knocked immigration off its perch as the top agenda item for the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relations for the first time in recent memory.

Mexican officials now say conversations around immigration have shifted toward cajoling countries into taking back their citizens and reintegrating them to keep them from leaving again — a major Trump administration priority around the world.

Cooperation on security

Sheinbaum has blunted some of the Trump administration’s tough talk on fentanyl and drug smuggling cartels by giving her security chief Omar García Harfuch more authority.

Mexico has also extradited dozens of drug cartel figures to the U.S., including Rafael Caro Quintero, long sought in the 1985 killing of a DEA agent. That show of goodwill, and a much more visible effort against the cartels’ fentanyl production, has gotten the Trump administration’s attention.

That’s a significant improvement. Only a few years ago, the DEA struggled to get visas for its people in Mexico, and then-President Andrés Manuel López Obrador accused the U.S. government of fabricating evidence against a former Mexican defense secretary, though he never presented evidence to back up the allegation.

Not everything has gone so smoothly, though. Trump criticized Sheinbaum for rejecting his proposal to send U.S. troops to Mexico to help thwart the illegal drug trade.

Last month, Sheinbaum said there was no way the U.S. military would be able to make strikes in Mexico, after Trump said he was open to the idea. And she has denounced U.S. strikes on boats allegedly carrying drugs in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific.

“The president of Mexico is a lovely woman, but she is so afraid of the cartels that she can’t even think straight,” Trump said earlier this year.

Sheinbaum declined to take the bait — and avoided turning up the political pressure — by sidestepping Trump’s criticism.

___

Associated Press writer Chris Sherman contributed from Mexico City.

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Business

Apple rocked by executive departures, with chip chief at risk of leaving next

Published

13 minutes ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

Apple Inc., long the model of stability in Silicon Valley, is suddenly undergoing its biggest personnel shake-up in decades, with senior executives and key engineers both hitting the exits.

In just the past week, Apple’s heads of artificial intelligence and interface design stepped down. Then the company announced that its general counsel and head of governmental affairs were leaving as well. All four executives have reported directly to Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook, marking an exceptional level of turnover in Apple’s C-suite.

And more changes are likely coming. Johny Srouji — senior vice president of hardware technologies and one of Apple’s most respected executives — recently told Cook that he is seriously considering leaving in the near future, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Srouji, the architect of Apple’s prized in-house chips effort, has informed colleagues that he intends to join another company if he ultimately departs.

At the same time, AI talent has been fleeing for tech rivals — with Meta Platforms Inc., OpenAI and a variety of startups poaching many of Apple’s engineers. That threatens to hamper the company’s efforts to catch up in artificial intelligence, an area where it’s struggled to make a mark.

It all adds up to one of the most tumultuous stretches of Cook’s tenure. Though the CEO himself is unlikely to leave imminently, the company has to rebuild its ranks and figure out how to thrive in the AI era.

Within the company, some of the departures are cause for deep concern — with Cook looking to stave off more with stronger compensation packages for key talent. In other cases, the exits just reflect the fact that veteran executives are nearing retirement age. Still, many of the shifts constitute a disconcerting brain drain.

While Cook maintains that Apple is working on the most innovative product lineup in its history — a slate that’s expected to include foldable iPhones and iPads, smart glasses, and robots — Apple hasn’t launched a successful new product category in a decade. That leaves it vulnerable to poaching from a range of nimbler rivals better equipped to develop the next generation of devices around AI.

A spokesperson for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.

The exit of Apple’s AI chief, John Giannandrea, followed a number of stumbles in generative AI. The company’s Apple Intelligence platform has suffered from delays and subpar features. And a highly touted overhaul to the Siri voice assistant is roughly a year and a half behind schedule. Moreover, the software will rely heavily on a partnership with Alphabet Inc.’s Google to fill the gaps in its capabilities.

Against that backdrop, Apple began phasing Giannandrea out of his role in March but is allowing him to remain until next spring.

Within Apple, employees have long expected Giannandrea to step aside — and some have expressed surprise that he’s sticking around as long as he is.

But parting ways with Giannandrea sooner would have been taken as public acknowledgment of a problem, people familiar with the situation said.

Design veteran Alan Dye, meanwhile, is heading to Meta’s Reality Labs unit — a remarkable defection to one of Apple’s fiercest rivals.

Within a day of that news, Apple turned around and announced that it had poached one of Meta’s executives. Jennifer Newstead, chief legal officer at the social networking company, will become Apple’s general counsel. She helped oversee Meta’s successful antitrust battle with the US Federal Trade Commission — experience that’s likely to prove useful in Apple’s own legal fight with the Justice Department over alleged anticompetitive practices.

Newstead is taking over for Kate Adams, who served eight years in the role and will retire in late 2026. Lisa Jackson, vice president for environment, policy and social initiatives, is retiring as well — and her duties will be divided up among other executives.

Though the news of Adams’ departure was jarring — especially considering the number of Apple legal disputes currently on her plate — she’s had a fairly long tenure for a general counsel at the company.

Jackson, meanwhile, was widely expected to be leaving soon. The former Obama administration official has kept a lower profile during President Donald Trump’s second term, opting to dispatch deputies to handle discussions with the White House. Bloomberg News had previously reportedthat she was considering retirement.

These exits follow an even bigger departure. Jeff Williams, Cook’s longtime No. 2, retired last month after a decade as chief operating officer. Another veteran leader, Chief Financial Officer Luca Maestri, stepped into a smaller role at the start of 2025 and is likely to retire in the not-too-distant future.

The flurry of retirements reflects a demographic reality for Apple. Many of its most senior executives have been at the company for decades and are roughly the same age — either in their 60s or nearing it.

Cook turned 65 last month, fueling speculation that he would join the exodus. People close to the executive have said that he’s unlikely to leave soon, though succession planning has been underway for years. John Ternus, Apple’s 50-year-old hardware engineering chief, is considered by employees to be the frontrunner CEO candidate.

When Cook does step down, he’s likely to shift into the chairman job and maintain a high level of influence over the iPhone maker. That makes it unlikely that Apple will select an outsider as the next CEO, even as executives like Nest Labs founder Tony Fadell are being pushed as candidates by people outside the company. Though Fadell helped invent Apple’s iconic iPod, he left the tech giant 15 years ago on less-than-friendly terms.

For now, Cook remains active at Apple and travels extensively on behalf of the company. However, the executive does have an unexplained tremor that causes his hands to shake from time to time — something that’s been discussed among Apple employees in recent months.

The shaking has been noticed by both executives and rank-and-file staff during meetings and large company gatherings, according to people familiar with the matter. But people close to Cook say he is healthy and refute rumors to the contrary that have circulated in Silicon Valley.

A more imminent risk is the departure of Srouji, the chip chief. Cook has been working aggressively to retain him — an effort that included offering a substantial pay package and the potential of more responsibility down the road. One scenario floated internally by some executives involves elevating him into the role of chief technology officer. Such a job — overseeing a wide swath of both hardware engineering and silicon technologies — would potentially make him Apple’s second-most-powerful executive.

But that change would likely require Ternus to be promoted to CEO, a step the company may not be ready to take. And some within Apple have said that Srouji would prefer not to work under a different CEO, even with an expanded title.

If Srouji does depart, which isn’t yet a certainty, the company would likely tap one of his two top lieutenants — Zongjian Chen or Sribalan Santhanam — to replace him.

The recent shifts are already reshaping Apple’s power structure. More authority is now flowing to a quartet of executives: Ternus, services chief Eddy Cue, software head Craig Federighi and new COO Sabih Khan. Apple’s AI efforts have been redistributed across its leadership, with Federighi becoming the company’s de facto AI chief.

Ternus is also poised to take a starring role next year in the celebration of Apple’s 50th anniversary, further raising his profile. And he’s been given more responsibility over robotics and smart glasses — two areas seen as future growth drivers.

Further reorganization is likely. Deirdre O’Brien, head of retail and human resources, has been with Apple for more than 35 years, while marketing chief Greg Joswiak has spent four decades at the company. Apple has elevated the key lieutenants under both executives, preparing for their eventual retirements.

At the same time, Apple is contending with a talent drain in its engineering ranks. This has become a serious concern for the executive team, and Apple’s human resources organization has been instructed to ramp up recruitment and retention efforts, people familiar with the situation said.

Robby Walker, who had overseen Siri and an initiative to build a ChatGPT-like search experience, left the company in October. His replacement, Ke Yang, departed after only weeks in the job, joining Meta’s new Superintelligence Labs.

To help fill the void left by Giannandrea, Apple hired Google and Microsoft Corp. alum Amar Subramanya as vice president of artificial intelligence. He’ll report to Federighi, the software chief.

But there’s been a broader collapse within Apple’s artificial intelligence organization, spurred by the departure of AI models chief Ruoming Pang. Pang, along with colleagues such as Tom Gunter and Frank Chu, went to Meta, which has used eye-popping compensation packages to lure talent.

Roughly a dozen other top AI researchers have left the organization, which is suffering from low morale. The company’s increasing use of external AI technology, such as Google’s Gemini, has been a particular concern for employees working on large language models.

Apple’s AI robotics software team has also seen widespread departures, including its leader Jian Zhang, who likewise joined Meta. That group is tasked with creating underlying technology for products such as a tabletop robot and a mobile bot.

The hardware team for the tabletop device, code-named J595, has been bleeding talent too — with some headed to OpenAI. Dye also was a key figure overseeing that product’s software design.

The user interface organization has been hit as well, with several team members leaving between 2023 and this year. That attrition culminated in Dye’s exit, which stemmed partly from a desire to integrate AI more deeply into products and a feeling that Apple hasn’t been keeping pace in the area. Another top interface leader under Dye, Billy Sorrentino, also left for Meta.

The hardware side of the design group — the team responsible for the physical look and feel of Apple’s products — has been nearly wiped out over the last half-decade. Many staffers followed former design chief Jony Ive to his studio, LoveFrom, or went to other companies.

Longtime interface designer Stephen Lemay is now stepping in as Dye’s replacement. Cook is also taking on more responsibility for overseeing design, a role that had been held by Williams.

Ive, a visionary designer who helped create the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, is now working with OpenAI to develop a new generation of AI-enhanced devices. That company acquired Ive’s startup, io, for more than $6 billion to jump-start its hardware business — setting its sights on Apple’s territory.

Like Meta, OpenAI has become a key beneficiary of Apple’s talent flight. The San Francisco-based company has hired dozens of Apple engineers across a wide range of fields, including people working on the iPhone, Mac, camera technology, silicon design, audio, watches and the Vision Pro headset.

In a previously unreported development, the AI company is hiring Apple’s Cheng Chen, a senior director in charge of display technologies. His purview included the optics that go into the Vision Pro headset. OpenAI recruited Tang Tan, one of Apple’s top hardware engineering executives, two years ago.

And over the summer, the company lost the dean of Apple University, the internal program designed to preserve the company’s culture and practices after the passing of co-founder Steve Jobs. Richard Locke, who spent nearly three years at Apple, left to become dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s business school.

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Business

Epstein grand jury documents from Florida can be released by DOJ, judge rules

Published

45 minutes ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

A federal judge on Friday gave the Justice Department permission to release transcripts of a grand jury investigation into Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of underage girls in Florida — a case that ultimately ended without any federal charges being filed against the millionaire sex offender.

U.S. District Judge Rodney Smith said a recently passed federal law ordering the release of records related to Epstein overrode the usual rules about grand jury secrecy.

The law signed in November by President Donald Trump compels the Justice Department, FBI and federal prosecutors to release later this month the vast troves of material they have amassed during investigations into Epstein that date back at least two decades.

Friday’s court ruling dealt with the earliest known federal inquiry.

In 2005, police in Palm Beach, Florida, where Epstein had a mansion, began interviewing teenage girls who told of being hired to give the financier sexualized massages. The FBI later joined the investigation.

Federal prosecutors in Florida prepared an indictment in 2007, but Epstein’s lawyers attacked the credibility of his accusers publicly while secretly negotiating a plea bargain that would let him avoid serious jail time.

In 2008, Epstein pleaded guilty to relatively minor state charges of soliciting prostitution from someone under age 18. He served most of his 18-month sentence in a work release program that let him spend his days in his office.

The U.S. attorney in Miami at the time, Alex Acosta, agreed not to prosecute Epstein on federal charges — a decision that outraged Epstein’s accusers. After the Miami Herald reexamined the unusual plea bargain in a series of stories in 2018, public outrage over Epstein’s light sentence led to Acosta’s resignation as Trump’s labor secretary.

A Justice Department report in 2020 found that Acosta exercised “poor judgment” in handling the investigation, but it also said he did not engage in professional misconduct.

A different federal prosecutor, in New York, brought a sex trafficking indictment against Epstein in 2019, mirroring some of the same allegations involving underage girls that had been the subject of the aborted investigation. Epstein killed himself while awaiting trial. His longtime confidant and ex-girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, was then tried on similar charges, convicted and sentenced in 2022 to 20 years in prison.

Transcripts of the grand jury proceedings from the aborted federal case in Florida could shed more light on federal prosecutors’ decision not to go forward with it. Records related to state grand jury proceedings have already been made public.

When the documents will be released is unknown. The Justice Department asked the court to unseal them so they could be released with other records required to be disclosed under the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The Justice Department hasn’t set a timetable for when it plans to start releasing information, but the law set a deadline of Dec. 19.

The law also allows the Justice Department to withhold files that it says could jeopardize an active federal investigation. Files can also be withheld if they’re found to be classified or if they pertain to national defense or foreign policy.

One of the federal prosecutors on the Florida case did not answer a phone call Friday and the other declined to answer questions.

A judge had previously declined to release the grand jury records, citing the usual rules about grand jury secrecy, but Smith said the new federal law allowed public disclosure.

The Justice Department has separate requests pending for the release of grand jury records related to the sex trafficking cases against Epstein and Maxwell in New York. The judges in those matters have said they plan to rule expeditiously.

___

Sisak reported from New York.

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Miss Universe co-owner gets bank accounts frozen as part of probe into drugs, fuel and arms trafficking

Published

1 hour ago

December 6, 2025

Jace Porter

Mexico’s anti-money laundering office has frozen the bank accounts of the Mexican co-owner of Miss Universe as part of an investigation into drugs, fuel and arms trafficking, an official said Friday.

The country’s Financial Intelligence Unit, which oversees the fight against money laundering, froze Mexican businessman Raúl Rocha Cantú’s bank accounts in Mexico, a federal official told The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to comment on the investigation.

The action against Rocha Cantú adds to mounting controversies for the Miss Universe organization. Last week, a court in Thailand issued an arrest warrant for the Thai co-owner of the Miss Universe Organization in connection with a fraud case and this year’s competition — won by Miss Mexico Fatima Bosch — faced allegations of rigging.

The Miss Universe organization did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press seeking comment about the allegations against Rocha Cantú.

Mexico’s federal prosecutors said last week that Rocha Cantú has been under investigation since November 2024 for alleged organized crime activity, including drug and arms trafficking, as well as fuel theft. Last month, a federal judge issued 13 arrest warrants for some of those involved in the case, including the Mexican businessman, whose company Legacy Holding Group USA owns 50% of the Miss Universe shares.

The organization’s other 50% belongs to JKN Global Group Public Co. Ltd., a company owned by Jakkaphong “Anne” Jakrajutatip.

A Thai court last week issued an arrest warrant for Jakrajutatip who was released on bail in 2023 on the fraud case. She failed to appear as required in a Bangkok court on Nov. 25. Since she did not notify the court about her absence, she was deemed to be a flight risk, according to a statement from the Bangkok South District Court.

The court rescheduled her hearing for Dec. 26.

Rocha Cantú was also a part owner of the Casino Royale in the northern Mexican city of Monterrey, when it was attacked in 2011 by a group of gunmen who entered it, doused gasoline and set it on fire, killing 52 people.

Baltazar Saucedo Estrada, who was charged with planning the attack, was sentenced in July to 135 years in prison.

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