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Jaguar Land Rover has cut its board from 11 members to three and shifted operational control to a 13-member executive committee under CEO P.B. Balaji as Tata Motors pushes a turnaround amid falling sales, weak profits, cyberattack costs and pressure from its EV transition. View More

The figure beat projections of 0.4% from Reuters-polled economists, and against the 0.3% in the last quarter. View More

Residential and commercial properties near the Shibuya district of Tokyo on May 4, 2023.Richard A. Brooks | Afp | Getty Images Japan's economy grew at an annualized 2.1% in the first quarter of 2026, surpassing analysts' expectations, on the back of improved consumption and strong exports. The growth was sharply higher compared with Reuters-polled analysts' average estimate of 1.7%, and against the 1.3% in the previous quarter. On a quarter-on-quarter basis, the economy expanded 0.5%, government data released Tuesday showed, compared with estimates of 0.4%, and improving from the 0.3% growth at the end of 2025.These figures do not capture the full impact of the Iran war, which started at the end of February. The Bank of Japan has cut its growth forecast for the fiscal year 2026 to 0.5% from 1%, and sharply raised its core inflation outlook to 2.8% from 1.9%.At its last meeting on May 7, the bank warned that Japan's economic growth was likely to decelerate this year, as the increase in crude oil prices due to the the Middle East crisis is expected to crimp corporate profits and real household incomes. Back then, Shigeto Nagai, head of Japan economics at Oxford Economics, told CNBC a "very light stagflation-like situation could happen this year" for Japan.He said that real disposable incomes have been negative "for some time," and forecast that the country will see stagnant growth and inflation above 2%.Inflation in Japan accelerating in March for the first time in five months. "The rise in crude oil prices is expected to push up prices, mainly of energy and goods, with moves to pass on wage increases to selling prices continuing," the BOJ said.On Monday, Reuters reported that Tokyo was likely to issue fresh debt for an extra budget so as to cushion the economic blow from the Middle East war as the country subsidizes energy bills. — This is breaking news, please check back for updates. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

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The U.S. and Chinese readouts agree on one phrase: constructive strategic stability. View More

U.S. President Donald Trump (R) gestures to China's President Xi Jinping as he leaves after a visit to Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing on May 15, 2026.Evan Vucci | Afp | Getty Images Hi, this is Evelyn, writing to you from Beijing. Welcome to the latest edition of The China Connection — a succinct snapshot of what I'm seeing and hearing from local businesses.U.S. President Donald Trump has left Beijing after a highly anticipated two-day visit with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Fanfare aside, what's changed for business? The big story After a momentous Trump-Xi summit in Beijing last week with over a dozen American executives in tow, the U.S. and Chinese readouts agree on one phrase: constructive strategic stability.But what does that really mean?From an economic and trade perspective, the term amounts to "a form of commercial détente," James Zimmerman, chairman of the American Chamber of Commerce in China, told me.In practical terms, it signals intent to talk and creates room to resolve disputes without a return to trade war uncertainty — a boost for business confidence, he said.China emphasized that the framework would set the tone for at least three years, or the rest of Trump's presidency."This is a fundamental change from the previous unilateral definition of strategic competition," said Hai Zhao, a director of international political studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, a state-affiliated think tank.He said that the two countries could use the months before Xi's planned visit to the U.S. on Sept. 24 to lay the groundwork for greater cooperation on fentanyl, immigration, increased human interaction and tourism. 3 major shifts Getting here was not possible without changes on several fronts.First, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio joined Trump on his trip to Beijing, despite Chinese travel sanctions imposed on him in 2020 when he was still a senator.Rubio, who is also serving as interim security advisor, is the "designated interlocutor" right now, Zhao said. "So there's no reason China [would not] invite him on this trip and work with him [in] the future."Beijing also hopes that Trump can keep anti-China forces at bay domestically even after the midterm elections in November, and preserve bipartisan support for stable U.S.-China relations, Zhao said.Second, Beijing has made its bottom line on Taiwan clear.Xi warned Trump that the island — which the Chinese leader described as the biggest issue in U.S.-China relations — could put the bilateral relationship into "great jeopardy" if mishandled. Trump, meanwhile, pushed back against the idea that Taiwan should pursue independence, especially with U.S. backing, according to an interview with Fox News that aired Friday afternoon, while urging both sides to "cool it."The comments offered a much clearer stance on Taiwan than during the Biden administration, when the White House had to reaffirm the longstanding U.S. position after the president's comments hinted otherwise.Third, China is increasingly playing the long game on technology.Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang was tight-lipped on China chip sales when he stopped to speak with reporters on his way to a group meeting with Chinese Premier Li Qiang.Trump "asked me to come," Huang said, adding that he was in Beijing to support the president during the summit.But when Trump was asked about the Nvidia H200 chips, he indicated that China had chosen not to buy them, while leaving open the possibility that this could change. "This is a calculated defensive maneuver by President Xi," Nomura's Chief China Economist Ting Lu said in a note."Beijing is reluctant to lock its major tech companies into a U.S.-regulated system that directly enriches the U.S. Treasury via a 25% surcharge and weakens Beijing's efforts to support China's own AI chipmakers."Just as China in 2025 was far more prepared to withstand U.S. tariffs than in 2018 , the strategic stakes in the technological race are now becoming clearer. Need to know China's April economic data underwhelms, with retail sales growth slowing to lowest since 2022Retail sales rose by just 0.2% in April from a year ago, while fixed asset investment fell on a year-to-date basis as the real estate drag worsened. Industrial production rose by 4.1%, also slower than expected.U.S. can hold AI talks with China because 'we are in the lead,' Bessent tells CNBCThe U.S. and China are "going to set up a protocol in terms of how do we go forward with best practices for AI to make sure nonstate actors don't get a hold of these models," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC's Joe Kernen on ThursdayA state banquet, selfies with Musk and Huang's noodle run: The spectacle of Trump's Beijing visitAlongside the Trump-Xi summit, videos and photos emerged on social media of U.S. executives, especially Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, mingling with locals or exploring Beijing. Coming up May 18-19: APEC senior officials meet in ShanghaiMay 19-20: Russia's Vladimir Putin pays a state visit to ChinaMay 21: Xiaomi holds launch event for YU7 GT SUV in BeijingMay 20-23: APEC trade ministers meet in SuzhouMay 24-27: IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems in Shanghai Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

After a 140% stock surge and a sweeping Wall Street reset, Google’s developer conference has to prove the AI story is more than a market narrative. View More

In this articleGOOGFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNT An Android character is displayed in front of a building on the Google headquarters campus on July 23, 2025 in Mountain View, California. Justin Sullivan | Getty Images Alphabet's stock is up 140% over the past year, with a cloud business that is growing faster than Amazon's and Microsoft's. But 18 months ago, the Google parent looked like it had spent a decade preparing for the artificial intelligence era, only to watch OpenAI define the market. Now, Wall Street is valuing Alphabet like one of the few companies positioned to profit from every layer of the generative AI boom.Google I/O, which begins Tuesday, has always been its venue for showing developers where the company is headed. This year, the stakes are higher. Wall Street has already rewarded Alphabet for its AI comeback, but investors want to see whether that confidence is backed by a real product roadmap across key areas like search, cloud, Android, chips and enterprise software."Google is probably the best-positioned company to monetize AI at scale because it controls almost every layer of the stack," said Lo Toney, founding managing partner of Plexo Capital and an early investor in Anthropic. "We've never really seen a company that has that complete vertical integration from top to bottom to be able to support AI."Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said the advantage in having that many layers of control is not just scale, but speed."There is a benefit to owning the full stack in terms of the speed that you can innovate," Munster said. "When you're building on your own custom silicon, for example, that's an advantage of speed. When you have access to power, you can get data centers up more quickly. That's a speed advantage, which is important."Here are seven key areas investors are watching for at Google I/O: What's next for Gemini The most closely watched announcement will be whether Google unveils a next-generation Gemini model. Reports ahead of I/O have pointed to a potential Gemini 4 debut, though analysts are not fully counting on it. Citi noted that with Gemini 3.1 Pro released in February, Google has been on a roughly three-to-four month launch cadence, making a Gemini 3.2 or 3.5 update more likely than a full generational leap.That makes the Gemini 4 question more than a version number. A step up would give Google a cleaner answer to OpenAI and Anthropic. Mizuho wrote that a Gemini 4 announcement "would push Google back up to the bleeding edge of the frontier," while just another generation 3 update would read more like catch-up.The broader Gemini ecosystem update will also be key. Mizuho analysts said they'll specifically be watching for progress on Project Astra, Google's universal AI assistant, along with deeper Gemini Live capabilities, screen sharing, video understanding and native tool use across Search, Gmail, Calendar and Maps. Updates to Gemma, Google's open-source model family, and Gemini Robotics are expected, as well.The usage numbers heading into the event are already stronger than they were a year ago. Paid Gemini Enterprise monthly active users grew 40% in the first quarter over the previous quarter. The Gemini app saw U.S. monthly active users grow 127% year-over-year in April, according to Citi data. Token consumption hit 16 billion per minute as of Google Cloud Next. watch nowVIDEO2:5602:56Anthropic's $200 billion commitment to Google Cloud narrows Alphabet-Nvidia gapTechCheck AI agents If there is one theme running through the I/O session lineup, it is agents. Google has sessions on agentic coding workflows, multimodal tools, media generation, robotics and AI agents. The goal is to position Gemini as not just a chatbot but more of an operating layer across Google's products, capable of understanding context and taking action."It's who wins the office copilot market," Toney said. "If the bigger market becomes AI agents and orchestrating them — inference infrastructure, multimodal workflows, enterprise search — that's where we see a big opportunity for Google being able to drive Alphabet's future growth."Agentic coding is part of positioning Gemini as a response to Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. That category has become one of the clearest proof points for AI's commercial value, especially in enterprise software. Agentic shopping Commerce may be the bigger opportunity. Google already has search, shopping, autofill and payments; now it wants Gemini to connect them into an agentic checkout experience.Google has been expanding its Universal Commerce Protocol, adding partners including Meta, Microsoft, Stripe, Klarna and Affirm in recent weeks. I/O is expected to further show how that infrastructure could enable end-to-end agentic checkout, where Gemini does not just answer a shopping query, but completes a transaction.Sameer Samat, president of Android Ecosystem at Google, described asking Gemini to plan a barbecue, build a menu, open Instacart, add ingredients to a Safeway cart and notify him when the task was done."If you add that up multiple times a day across your week, that's a lot of time back," Samat said. "Those are the kinds of features that I think people are much more excited about and are much more tangible."Toney said Google's multimodal experience gives it a structural edge as those workflows get more complex. "Enterprise workflows increasingly include things like video, voice, images, and code," he said. "Google is uniquely strong across multimodal systems because they have this experience with some of the largest applications that handle them — YouTube, Android, Maps, Search, DeepMind — and then obviously, the TPUs."For investors, the agentic commerce push has implications beyond Alphabet. Mizuho flagged that more agentic product development from Google could weigh on marketplaces like Booking Holdings, Expedia, DoorDash, Zillow and Instacart, noting that anticipation of that shift is likely already part of recent weakness in those stocks. AI Mode The next question is how Google gets paid for it. AI-enabled campaigns now account for more than 30% of search spend, according to Citi. AI Max, which emerged from beta in April and is set to replace Dynamic Search Ads by September, is showing early results, including stronger conversions with its full feature suite.Citi noted that AI Mode could help Google monetize longer, more complex queries that historically were harder to turn into ad dollars. But Mizuho points to the tradeoff: AI Mode searches are producing far fewer outbound clicks, with the firm estimating that 93% end without an external click and that organic click-through rates decline 15% on AI Overview queries.That makes monetization one of the biggest questions heading into I/O. Munster said he will be watching for new ad products inside AI Mode, how Google frames agentic commerce, and what it says about more personalized AI experiences. watch nowVIDEO1:3401:34Alphabet briefly tops Nvidia after report of $200 billion Anthropic cloud dealFast Money Google Cloud For investors, though, the most consequential I/O announcements may come from cloud and infrastructure.Cloud has become one of Alphabet's strongest pillars. It grew 63% year-over-year in the first quarter, outpacing both Azure and AWS. Cloud backlog hit $462 billion, up roughly 90% quarter-over-quarter, with half expected to be recognized over the next 24 months. Gen AI product revenue grew roughly 800% year-over-year.CEO Sundar Pichai has pointed to several drivers behind that growth, including faster new customer wins, larger commitments and deeper relationships with existing clients. On the company’s first-quarter earnings call, he said the number of billion-dollar-plus deals signed in 2025 surpassed the previous three years combined, while existing customers were outpacing their initial commitments by more than 30%. AI chips The new wildcard is external TPU sales. Google disclosed in the first quarter that it will begin delivering its custom AI chips to outside customers in the second half of 2026, with broader expansion planned for 2027. It is a potentially large new revenue stream, but investors still do not know exactly how to model it.Mizuho wrote that investors will be listening for any detail on whether external TPU sales are booked as gross sales or royalty revenue, what margins look like and how those deals are accounted for in backlog.Toney called TPUs one of the most underappreciated parts of the Alphabet thesis, arguing that Google's in-house chips have allowed the company to build a tightly integrated AI infrastructure that supports not only Gemini and Cloud, but also YouTube, Android and the rest of its ecosystem.Munster estimates the broader AI chip market is running at roughly a $500 billion annual pace, meaning even modest share gains could become material for Alphabet. Anthropic No relationship will draw more scrutiny heading into I/O than Google's ties to Anthropic. Alphabet holds a significant ownership stake in the AI startup, and the recently reported $200 billion cloud commitment, if accurate, could represent a major portion of Google's contracted future cloud revenue.Google has also committed up to $40 billion in total investment, creating a loop in which capital flows into Anthropic and back to Google through cloud and TPU spending.That dynamic raises a concentration question that investors have already seen elsewhere in cloud. Oracle's stock soared after reporting a massive backlog jump tied largely to OpenAI, then sold off as investors grew more nervous about customer concentration. Microsoft faces a similar debate around its OpenAI relationship.Toney said the Google-Anthropic relationship looks more like a hedge than a weakness. Even if enterprises choose Claude over Gemini, he said, Google can still benefit from the infrastructure demand behind that usage."If enterprises prefer Claude, then Google still wins in infrastructure because all of that activity has to live somewhere," he said. "Google still wins because of their TPUs."WATCH: Inside Alphabet's capex spending payoff: What investors need to know watch nowVIDEO3:1303:13Inside Alphabet's capex spending payoff: What investors need to knowSquawk on the Street Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

The CDC earlier Monday said an American had tested positive for Ebola in Africa. View More

US President Donald Trump speaks during a healthcare affordability event in the South Court Auditorium of The White House in Washington, DC, on May 18, 2026. Kent Nishimura | AFP | Getty Images President Donald Trump on Monday said he was concerned about Ebola after an American tested positive for it."I'm concerned about everything, but certainly [I] am," Trump said when asked about Ebola during a White House event on his administration's consumer-drug website TrumpRx. "I think that it's been confined right now to Africa, and but it's something that has had a breakout," he said of the disease.The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced earlier Monday that one American tested positive for Ebola while in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. A day earlier, the World Health Organization declared that the spread of the Ebola-causing virus known as Bundibugyo, which is currently appearing in the DRC and Uganda, constitutes a global public health emergency. The WHO specified that it "does not meet the criteria of pandemic emergency," as defined under International Health Regulations.In 2014, when an Ebola outbreak occurred during Barack Obama's presidency, Trump repeatedly criticized Obama on social media for how he handled the spread. Read more CNBC politics coverageGas tax holiday as Trump promises? Not so fast, trucking, construction industries sayTrump doesn't need Congress to restart Iran strikes: HegsethAnalysis: Iran war hangs over Trump's China trip — and his presidencyCongress members push Chinese auto parts ban before Trump China trip The American who tested positive developed symptoms over the weekend and tested positive late Sunday, Dr. Satish Pillai, the CDC's Ebola response incident manager, told reporters on a call. "We have stood up a full interagency response" to the outbreak, Heidi Overton, a physician who was tapped in 2025 for Trump's Domestic Policy Council, said at the White House event Monday afternoon.Overton confirmed that an American is symptomatic and said that person, "as well as six other high-risk contacts, are going to be taken out of that region and taken to Germany.""Right now, there are no cases of Ebola in America. We want to keep it that way, and we are doing everything we can to support Americans in the region," she added. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Rep. Thomas Massie will face off on Tuesday against a Trump-backed candidate in a Republican primary in Kentucky's 4th congressional district. View More

U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, R-Ky., speaks during a press conference on the Epstein Files Transparency Act ahead of a House vote on the release of files related to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Nov. 18, 2025.Annabelle Gordon | Reuters After a string of wins in Republican primary elections this spring, President Donald Trump is preparing for the next stop on his revenge tour: Kentucky, where Rep. Thomas Massie, a perennial thorn in the side of House GOP leaders and the president, is locked in a bitter fight for his political future.This month alone Trump has successfully led the charge to oust a group of Indiana state Republicans who opposed his redistricting push, and helped end the reelection bid of Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who voted to convict Trump in his second impeachment.Now Trump has his sights set on Massie, the Libertarian-leaning Republican with a fierce independent streak, who will face off on Tuesday against Ed Gallrein, a former Navy SEAL who was recruited to the race by the president. Massie is an anti-abortion rights, pro-gun, fiscal conservative known for wearing a homemade debt clock on his lapel around the Capitol. But he has bucked the president on the release of files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and regularly votes against GOP priorities. Trump wants him gone. And on Monday he fired off a series of posts targeting Massie."The worst Congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican Party, is Thomas Massie. He is an obstructionist and a fool. Vote him out of office tomorrow, Tuesday. It will be a great day for America! President DJT," Trump wrote in one."We're in a fight against the worst congressman in the history of our country, his name is Thomas Massie, he's from Kentucky. I hope you're going to put him out of business tomorrow. He is so bad," Trump said in a video, posted late Monday afternoon, while seated in the Oval Office. Read more CNBC politics coverageGas tax holiday as Trump promises? Not so fast, trucking, construction industries sayTrump doesn't need Congress to restart Iran strikes: HegsethAnalysis: Iran war hangs over Trump's China trip — and his presidencyCongress members push Chinese auto parts ban before Trump China trip Primaries like the one on Tuesday in Kentucky are effectively a referendum on Trump's grip on the Republican Party.Trump's approval ratings have plummeted in recent months as prices rise in response to the Iran war, and GOP defectors in Congress have at times bucked the president on tariffs and foreign policy ahead of November's pivotal midterm election. Republicans are trying to defend slim majorities in both the House and Senate.But with two and a half years remaining in his second term, his influence on Republican electoral politics is hard to deny. A recent CBS News poll found that 63% of those surveyed disapprove of Trump's handling of the job.The same poll found 85% of Republicans approve of the job Trump is doing, making him influential in primary elections, where he has been doling out endorsements on Truth Social."I think every day in a second term you have less and less power. But he still packs considerable punch among Republican primary voters," said John Feehery, a Republican strategist and former aide to House Speaker Dennis Hastert. "It's not politically smart to get into fights with the president."Massie's race is the most expensive House primary on record, according to AdImpact, as pro-Trump and pro-Israel groups have poured in money to oust the incumbent. More than $32.6 million has been spent on ads, including $7.9 million targeting Massie. And it's taken an ugly turn. One AI-generated ad targeting Massie from MAGA KY PAC accused him of being in a "throuple" with liberal Democratic Reps. Ilhan Omar of Minnesota and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. An attack ad against Gallrein portrays the billionaire donor Paul Singer, who gave to the Trump-backed candidate and is Jewish, with a rainbow Star of David in the background. Singer has a son who is gay.The Massie and Gallrein campaigns didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. The White House referred to Trump's Truth Social posts when asked for comment on the Kentucky race.In an unusual move, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was on the ground in Massie's district on Monday campaigning with Gallrein. Sitting Cabinet officials tend not to get involved in political campaigns, and a federal law, known as the Hatch Act, bars cabinet secretaries and other executive branch officials from engaging in political activities in their official capacities."Secretary Hegseth is attending this event in his personal capacity. No taxpayer dollars will be used to facilitate his visit," Pentagon spokesperson Sean Parnell said in a statement. "His participation has been thoroughly vetted and cleared by lawyers, including the Department of War Office of General Counsel, and does not violate the Hatch Act or any other applicable federal statute."Massie, meanwhile, has pointed to an influx of money from "the Israeli lobby," including from the likes of Singer and the billionaire Miriam Adelson, as well as organizations like American Israel Public Affairs Committee. Massie, who is generally against foreign aid, has opposed military aid to Israel and voted against symbolic resolutions in support of the country."[The primary]will be a referendum on foreign policy, whether Israel gets to dictate that by bullying members of Congress," Massie said on ABC News on Sunday. "But you can tell that I'm ahead in the polls and they're desperate, that's why they're sending the Secretary of War to my district tomorrow."Recent polling on the race appears to give Gallrein a slight edge, though it will be difficult to unseat a high-profile incumbent who has represented the district for more than a decade.But Feehery and a second Republican operative, who requested anonymity to speak candidly, both predicted that Massie would fall short for not being sufficiently loyal."My understanding of that district is [Massie] is well-liked. He has his own little base of Massie-like people who respect him for sticking to his guns," the operative said. But the amount of money spent in the race and the quality of Gallrein's candidacy will be tough for Massie to surmount, the operative said."I think it's going to be pretty hard. I expect him to lose tomorrow," the GOP operative said. Feehery concurred. Even as the clock ticks on Trump's time in power, Massie, like Cassidy, may have taken too big a political gamble by opposing the president."At the end of the day if you piss off Trump he's going to go after you," Feehery said. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Trump, at a White House event Monday, is expected to announce an expansion of the number of discounted prescription drugs offered through TrumpRX. View More

US President Donald Trump (R) gestures as he poses for photos with China's President Xi Jinping during a visit to Zhongnanhai Garden in Beijing on May 15, 2026. Evan Vucci | Afp | Getty Images President Donald Trump has returned stateside and so has his administration's focus, even as the Iran war and the aftermath of his China trip remain front-burner issues.Trump and his top officials are fanning out across the U.S. this week for events aimed at touting his domestic achievements — a notable pivot after major foreign policy matters in Iran, China, Cuba, Venezuela and elsewhere have dominated headlines for months.Trump on Monday afternoon is set to unveil his latest effort to bring down healthcare costs, while Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth travels to a campaign event in Kentucky and Vice President JD Vance attends a manufacturing-focused event in Missouri.The apparent shift, days after Trump's return from Beijing, comes ahead of the fast-approaching 2026 midterm elections, where Democrats hope to regain at least one chamber of Congress and fiercely push back against the president's policy agenda.They're aiming to capitalize on Trump's dwindling approval ratings, which have sunk to new lows in multiple recent polls as most Americans express negative views about the Iran war and the state of the economy.Those pressures have helped make affordability a central theme of the midterms. Trump's announcement at the White House is billed as a "Healthcare Affordability Event."Mike Nellis, a Democratic strategist and host of the Substack show "Endless Urgency," said the motivating factor is "that the American voter is pissed about the economy."Trump was elected on the promise to wrangle Biden-era inflation and bring down high prices, and "that hasn't happened," Nellis told CNBC. "So the American people are pretty pissed.""The economy is a marquee campaign issue," and Trump "recently had the lowest numbers on the economy he's had in either term," Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy said in a phone interview."Put that on top of gas prices, you're looking at big red flags," he said.A New York Times/Siena College poll published Monday found Trump's overall approval scraping 37%, a new second-term low, as nearly two-thirds of voters said they disapproved of his handling of the economy.The president is expected to announce an expansion of the number of discounted prescription drugs offered through the administration's TrumpRX website, a White House official told CNBC ahead of the 4:30 p.m. ET event.On Wednesday, Trump is set to travel to Connecticut to deliver a commencement address to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.Meanwhile, Hegseth, who leads the ongoing military operations in Iran, is set to travel to Hebron, Ky., to speak at an event with Ed Gallrein, a Trump-backed U.S. House candidate challenging incumbent GOP Rep. Thomas Massie.The unusual image of a sitting defense secretary attending an overtly political event — and doing so while prosecuting an active war — has raised eyebrows. The Pentagon, in a statement to CNBC, said Hegseth is attending the event "in his personal capacity." Read more CNBC politics coverageGas tax holiday as Trump promises? Not so fast, trucking, construction industries sayTrump doesn't need Congress to restart Iran strikes: HegsethAnalysis: Iran war hangs over Trump's China trip — and his presidencyCongress members push Chinese auto parts ban before Trump China trip According to the Pentagon's ethics guidelines, presidentially appointed and Senate-confirmed civilian officials are restricted under the Hatch Act and department policy from taking part in certain partisan political activities."No taxpayer dollars will be used to facilitate his visit. His participation has been thoroughly vetted and cleared by lawyers, including the Department of War Office of General Counsel, and does not violate the Hatch Act or any other applicable federal statute," Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in the statement.The campaign event, hosted on the eve of the state's primary elections by the MAGA-aligned America First Works, comes as Trump continues to hurl invective at Massie, whose clashes with GOP leadership have made him an archenemy of the president.Trump continued his push to oust Massie on Monday morning, calling him "the worst Congressman in the long and storied history of the Republican Party" in a Truth Social post."He is an obstructionist and a fool. Vote him out of office tomorrow, Tuesday. It will be a great day for America!" Trump wrote.Vance, who has been deeply involved in diplomatic efforts with Iranian counterparts, is also scheduled to deliver remarks at a manufacturing-focused event at a facility in Kansas City, Mo.The domestic focus follows Trump's return from his highly anticipated two-day summit in Beijing with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The meetings were studded with spectacle and carried high stakes, but ended with few concrete deals or other tangible outcomes.—Megan Cassella contributed to this report. Choose CNBC as your preferred source on Google and never miss a moment from the most trusted name in business news.

Officials said morning winds gusting above 30 mph (48 kph) pushed the flames through dry vegetation, though conditions began easing later in the day. Ventura County fire spokesperson Scott Dettorre said the situation could improve overnight. View More