Turkish conglomerate IC Holding plans to develop up to 20 small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs) in Türkiye and neighboring countries under a strategic partnership with U.S.-based ARC Clean Technology, a senior executive said on Wednesday.

The company, one of the main contractors on Türkiye’s first nuclear power plant project, Akkuyu, signed an agreement with ARC in April to deploy the company’s sodium-cooled advanced SMR technology.

Under the plan, IC Holding aims to build 10 reactors with a combined installed capacity of 1,000 megawatts (MW) in Türkiye, while developing another 10 reactors in neighboring countries, Murad Bayar, chair of IC Nuclear Technology, said.

Türkiye seeks to expand nuclear generation alongside renewable energy as it pursues its net-zero emissions goals.

In addition to the four-reactor Akkuyu plant, the government plans to build large-scale nuclear power stations in Sinop on the Black Sea coast and in the Thrace region.

It targets 15 gigawatts (GW) of conventional nuclear capacity, while also aiming to install 5 GW of SMR capacity by 2050. Akkuyu will have a combined installed capacity of 4,800 MW.

Although mass-producible SMR-type power plants, which are smaller and less expensive than conventional nuclear power plants that generate thousands of MW of electricity, are viewed as one of the technologies of the future, there are very few operational examples of them worldwide.

Technology platform

IC’s Bayar said the company intends not only to construct SMRs but also to establish a long-term technology platform covering reactor development, licensing, localization, supply chain creation and commercial deployment.

“We want to build not only an SMR project in Türkiye, but also a long-term technology platform for developing, licensing, localizing and commercializing SMR technology,” he told Reuters.

He said IC and ARC are negotiating a licensing agreement focused on commercializing the technology across Türkiye, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Central Asia, while ARC will concentrate on North American and European markets.

First projects, investment plans

Bayar said he expects the first ARC-based commercial SMR to enter operation in the United States or Canada within four to eight years, with Türkiye’s first project expected to follow.

IC aims to obtain regulatory approval from Türkiye’s Nuclear Regulatory Authority within four years.

Each ARC reactor is designed to generate 100 MW of electricity. Bayar estimated the first plant would require investment of around $500 million, equivalent to $5 million per MW. As the technology matures and production scales up, costs are expected to decline to around $300 million per plant, or $3 million per MW.

While upfront capital costs remain relatively high compared with conventional power plants, Bayar said SMRs are expected to benefit from lower operating costs once commissioned. IC plans to market electricity through bilateral power purchase agreements.

The company expects to serve as the investor, engineering contractor and operator of the first ARC-based SMR in Türkiye.

For future projects, it may participate in one or more of those roles, while also exploring opportunities within the SMR supply chain. However, Bayar said the company does not currently intend to enter the nuclear fuel business.

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President Donald Trump took in nearly $1.2 billion from his crypto businesses last year, a federal filing released Tuesday shows, locking in profits while his investors were socked with losses.

Mere startups when he took the oath of office, the new ventures have now eclipsed in revenue much of his vast property portfolio that took him decades to accumulate. Fueling their rise were billionaire investors and Trump’s own move to quash a federal crackdown on the industry.

Trump got more than $500 million from his World Liberty Financial business selling new crypto products, including “governance tokens,” according to the required annual disclosure report with the Office of Government Ethics. It also showed another crypto business, CIC Digital LLC, took in more than $600 million from sales of souvenir-type “meme” coins stamped with his face.

Both the tokens and the coins have plunged in value since the sales.

Trump also took in millions last year from selling Trump-branded Bibles, sneakers and other small items in another unprecedented move for the presidency. The sale of Trump-branded watches alone brought in $4.7 million.

On Wednesday, Trump said he ​had nothing ⁠to do with his finances, suggesting that “everybody’s profiting” from his time in power.

“You know why I’m profiting, because the stock market’s going up, everybody’s profiting,” he told reporters.

Asked about criticisms that he was using his position to enrich himself, the billionaire president said his earnings were placed in blind trusts to ensure that he could not do so.

“I don’t get involved in my personal (finances), we have funds that run my money,” Trump said. “I’ve made a lot of money before I became president, and they invest my money, and I don’t talk to them.”

‘We’re all profiting’

The 927-page disclosure form paints a stark, if incomplete picture of the massive growth of the president’s wealth since taking office last January through a web of business interests – many of which have benefited from the policy moves of Trump’s own government. Trump has insisted that his sons direct his finances but the arrangement rejects the conflict of interest protections that his recent predecessors in office had instituted.

Forbes estimates Trump’s net worth at $6 billion, up from $2.3 billion in 2024.

Trump on Wednesday insisted that his wealth was due to his prior career, despite the fact that the earnings were related to crypto ventures launched during his first year back in the White House.

“I don’t know if I’ve had a better career in politics or business, but I had a great career in business, and you know, you saw the cash, and you report the different things,” he said.

“So we’re all profiting. I’m profiting because I have a lot of money and a lot of cash.”

Trump business growing abroad

The rise of crypto relative to Trump’s property is especially noteworthy because he first rode to office boasting of his property wins. It’s also remarkable because that mainstay business also boomed last year. Trump took in tens of millions in fees from a flurry of new hotel, resort and condo deals overseas that amounts to the biggest property expansion ever in the century since the family business was founded.

Many of those countries were negotiating with the U.S. over tariffs, military aid and other important matters while the family business was striking the deals.

A property in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) generated $10.4 million for the Trump business last year. One in Saudi Arabia being built by a real estate developer close to the ruling family sent the president’s company $9 million. And one in Bucharest, Romania, and another in Qatar sent him $5 million each.

One of his prominent domestic properties, Mar-a-Lago in Florida, notched big growth last year, too.

Trump took in $77 million from the property, a 50% jump from the year earlier when he was just another citizen, as heads of state and business people flocked to it in his new term.

The disclosure report doesn’t give profit figures, just revenue, so it’s impossible to know how much he is earning.

Billion-dollar crypto man

After taking office last year, Trump reversed the Biden administration’s tough stance on the crypto industry and pushed policies friendly to the industry.

But regulators still had some concerns. Before Trump’s World Liberty began selling “governance tokens,” they issued warnings about this new kind of crypto asset, saying that unlike stocks, the tokens offer no ownership stake in the issuing company, just voting power on certain corporate policies, and are difficult to value.

Buyers pounced anyway, including a Chinese billionaire who spent $75 million on the tokens and $200 million on the souvenir coins. In February last year, a federal lawsuit charging him with duping investors was paused before being settled for a $10 million fine.

The billionaire, Justin Sun, has repeatedly denied his spending on Trump businesses had anything to do with his federal case, while World Liberty has dismissed the notion of a conflict of interest.

Meanwhile, investors have seen the value of their Trump-tied holdings drop significantly.

The price of World Liberty tokens has fallen 80% since they started trading in September. And the Trump souvenir coins that spiked to more than $74 in the days after launching in January 2025 now sell for $1.68.

The White House has repeatedly said Trump put his business in a trust managed by his sons and is not involved in its decisions and that there are no ethics issues to discuss.

“Neither the President nor his family has ever engaged – or will ever engage – in conflicts of interest. President Trump proudly made the United States the crypto capital of the world through executive actions,” White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said in a statement.

Kelly added: “All actions by President Trump and his administration are taken in the best interest of ⁠the ⁠American people – and any so-called ‘reporters’ pushing otherwise are recycling the same, tired, false narrative that Democrats and the legacy media have been pushing for a decade.”

The Trump umbrella company, the Trump Organization, has said its deals overseas were with private companies, not with governments.

Still, it is difficult to know what is truly private in countries ruled by authoritarians, royal families and one-party governments.

For a new Trump resort in Vietnam, the report shows Trump took in $5 million last year after the ruling Communist Party sent its deputy prime minister to sign off on the deal and, according to The New York Times, pushed farmers off the land to make way for the construction.

Türkiye is ​interested in joining the European Union’s ⁠payments system, and related financial institutions ​are ​working on ⁠the issue, Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said Wednesday.

Fidan was responding to a question at a press ⁠conference about ⁠his talks with EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas and two other EU commissioners that took ⁠place on Tuesday in Ankara.

Türkiye and ​the EU have been ​holding talks about ⁠the bloc’s 41-country ‌Single Euro ⁠Payments ‌Area (SEPA) that makes cross-border ​euro-currency payments ⁠cheaper, faster ⁠and more secure.

Users ⁠in far smaller Balkan candidates Albania, Moldova, Montenegro and North Macedonia, which adopted the scheme last ​year, could save up to 500 million euros ($568.7 million), the EU says.

Earlier this year, now-former EU envoy to Ankara, Jurgis Vilcinskas, said the bloc had pitched to Türkiye the idea that the candidate country could join SEPA to boost integration efforts and benefit those sending money abroad.

Under SEPA, Turkish banks could stand to lose revenues on transfers, which vary widely based on size. A Türkiye-Europe transfer of 1,000 euros to 5,000 euros ​can cost 40 euros, according ​to Western Union.

Europe is ⁠Türkiye’s largest trading partner, with more than 200 billion euros in volume. Although bloc membership talks have been stalled for years, both say they want to modernize ​their customs union and move to boost economic ties.

Earlier this year, ​Odile Renaud‑Basso, president of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), said SEPA would “basically make transactions cost-free.”

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The European Union on Wednesday took a first step toward what it aims to be curbing unfair competition from foreign online retailers such as Shein, Temu and ⁠AliExpress by imposing a 3 euro fee ($3.40) on low-value e-commerce imports ⁠from China that previously entered the bloc duty-free.

The move is another setback for platforms that used customs exemptions to sell goods at ultra-low prices, fuelling rapid growth and prompting complaints from retailers ​and policymakers.

The U.S., their biggest market, ended its “de minimis” exemption for imports from ​China ⁠in May and for all imports at the end of August.

The fees, which take effect on Wednesday, will be charged for each customs classification in a shipment. A parcel containing three different types of items would incur a total charge of 9 euros, while a parcel containing multiple dresses or multiple toys would be charged 3 euros.

Duty exemptions on low-value imports have been in place for decades, with the current threshold of 150 euros introduced in 2008. But the number of e-commerce parcels entering the European Union under the exemption has surged, reaching 5.8 billion in 2025 from 1.4 billion in 2022.

“In a different trading world, this made a lot of sense, but that world doesn’t exist anymore. It’s been turned on its head by e-commerce, especially from China,” EU lawmaker Dirk Gotink, who leads ⁠the ⁠customs reform topic in the European Parliament, said in an interview.

“The exemption was abused and misused on an industrial scale to create a competitive advantage at the expense of EU businesses.”

E-commerce air cargo volumes set to drop

Derek Lossing, an e-commerce and air cargo consultant who runs Cirrus Global Advisors, said he expects air shipments of e-commerce goods into the EU to fall by 10% to 35% in the weeks after the fees take effect, with likely repercussions for global air cargo volumes.

“The question is how effective the platforms are in pivoting to other markets,” said Lossing. “When the U.S. ended de minimis, Europe was a really good ⁠alternative that platforms could shift to – but now there’s not a really clear alternative to Europe.”

Lossing said platforms may pressure suppliers to absorb some of the additional costs to limit price increases for consumers and protect profitability.

Shein has been preparing for the change by ​expanding warehouse space in Wroclaw, Poland, and shipping more products to the EU in bulk.

Neither Shein nor Temu responded to ​requests for comment.

Consumer prices likely to rise as platforms pass duties on

The 3 euro charge is a temporary measure that is due to be replaced by category-specific duties from July 1, 2028, when ⁠the new EU ‌Customs Authority is ‌scheduled to begin operations.

The fees are likely to increase consumer prices ⁠as platforms pass on at least some of the additional costs.

AliExpress, ‌owned by Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, said in a statement that product listings would carry a “Price includes duties and VAT” label where applicable. ​For other items, customers would be shown a ⁠breakdown of import charges before completing a purchase.

Amazon, which launched its Amazon Haul ⁠ultra-cheap service after Temu and Shein’s rapid growth, said 97% of its EU shipments last year were fulfilled ⁠from warehouses within the bloc. For ​products shipped from outside the EU, customers would also be shown import charges before checking out, it said.

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One of the longest suspension bridges in the world has generated a combined TL 211 billion (over $4.5 billion) in fuel and time savings for Türkiye since it was launched a decade ago, a senior official said Wednesday.

Osmangazi Bridge, spanning the Gulf of Izmit at its narrowest point, was opened to traffic on July 1, 2026, to become the centerpiece of the 426-kilometer Istanbul-Izmir Highway.

It significantly cuts down travel time between Istanbul and the western provinces by bypassing the long drive around the gulf or the need to wait for car ferries.

Stretching more than 2.6 kilometers (about 1.6 miles) in total, it lowered travel times across the gulf from up to 1.5 hours by road or 45-60 minutes by ferry to just six minutes.

“The bridge has delivered approximately TL 40 billion in fuel savings and TL 171 billion in time savings over the past 10 years, bringing the total economic benefit to TL 211 billion,” Transport and Infrastructure Minister Abdulkadir Uraloğlu said.

Uraloğlu added that the shorter crossing has also reduced carbon emissions by 2 million tons over the same period.

Marking the bridge’s 10th anniversary, the minister said its construction was completed in 39 months.

Uraloğlu highlighted several engineering milestones achieved during construction, saying the bridge contains 109,490 tons of steel, equivalent to roughly 73,000 automobiles.

The steel cables used in the suspension system would stretch 84,518 kilometers if laid end to end, enough to circle the Earth more than twice.

The bridge’s main deck covers 96,364 square meters, an area comparable to about 14 football pitches, he said.

The minister also said the project set world records during construction.

A 22,500-ton steel deck section was installed using the incremental launching method, which he described as the world’s largest operation of its kind for a steel viaduct.

Two additional deck sections weighing 2,300 tons and 2,600 tons were installed using heavy-lift techniques, also setting global records for steel viaduct construction, he added.

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Eurozone factory output posted its best quarterly performance since the start of 2022 last month, while Asian manufacturers were lifted by an AI boom, according to business surveys on Wednesday that provide some respite from the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Cost pressures did dip, but they remain elevated as supply shortages and shipping delays lengthened lead times, suggesting the energy shock tied to the Middle East conflict could intensify.

S&P Global ​noted that most survey responses were collected before the signing of a memorandum ​of ⁠understanding for a ceasefire between the U.S. and Iran on June 17, meaning the full impact on supply chains and energy costs is not yet captured in the PMI data.

Inflation in the common currency area was less than expected last month, coming in at 2.8%, but still well above the European Central Bank’s (ECB) 2.0% target, official data showed.

“The inflation rate in the eurozone fell noticeably in June,” said Ralph Solveen at Commerzbank. “A key reason is that oil prices fell significantly over the past month due to the partial reopening of the Strait of Hormuz.”

On June 11, the ECB raised interest rates as a war-related energy cost surge had pushed inflation over 3%, well in excess of its 2% target.

The S&P Global Eurozone Manufacturing PMI slipped to a four-month low of 51.4 in ⁠June ⁠from May’s 51.6 but remained above the 50.0 threshold separating growth from contraction for a fifth month. The reading was just above a preliminary estimate of 51.3.

German factory activity expanded modestly while France’s grew slightly faster than initially forecast. In Britain, manufacturing cooled despite a boost to output from stockpiling ahead of price hikes.

Artificial support

For now, surveys underscore how the global AI investment wave is reshaping Asia’s economic fortunes. Booming demand for chips, data-center equipment and other technology goods provides a powerful engine for growth and acts as a critical buffer against mounting geopolitical and trade risks.

China, Japan and South Korea saw factory activity expand in June on solid demand for chips, ⁠computers and other AI-related products, as well as stockpiling by firms seeking to guard against shortages and price rises from the Middle East conflict.

RatingDog General Manufacturing China PMI hit 51.7 in June, expanding for a seventh straight month. It eased from May’s 51.8 but exceeded analysts’ ​forecast of 51.6. The finding aligned with an official survey on Tuesday showing factory activity returned to expansion last month ​on robust export orders.

Japan’s PMI rose to 54.8 from 54.5, expanding for a sixth consecutive month with new orders growing at their fastest pace in more than two years. But input cost inflation stayed at ⁠a nearly four-year ‌high, a sign ‌of mounting price pressures that could crimp corporate margins and lead to broad-based ⁠inflation.

South Korea’s factory activity expanded for a seventh consecutive month although at ‌a slower pace on falling export demand.

“Firms frequently reported that rising raw material prices, alongside difficulties sourcing and receiving inputs due to delays and shortages, ​weighed on sector performance,” said Usamah Bhatti, ⁠economist at S&P Global Market Intelligence.

Factory activity in most Asian emerging economies continued to ⁠expand. The Philippines held steady at 50.9 from 50.8, and Malaysia rose to 50.7 from 49.9, surveys showed.

Taiwan ⁠and Vietnam also saw ​factory activity expand. A separate survey showed India’s manufacturing sector expanded at its second-slowest pace in four years as export orders suffered from softer demand in Europe.

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