Why Peptides Could Become More Accessible in the U.S.

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The U.S. has seen more measles cases this year than it has for any in the past three decades. Plus, peptides could soon become more accessible in the U.S. if the FDA follows recommendations from an advisory panel. People who take them are really interested in optimizing their health. Maybe they are taking them for... purported muscle recovery, anti-aging purposes, or a more youthful skin. And the trade wars heat up as President Trump threatens new tariffs on the European Union. It's Friday, July 24th. I'm Alex O'SLev for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. We begin today with a grim statistic. Measles cases in the U.S. have reached a new three-decade high. The CDC today reported more than 2,300 confirmed cases of measles so far this year. That's more than in all of last year. The disease has spread because falling vaccination rates have made more communities vulnerable. Outbreaks in Utah and South Carolina contributed to around half of the country's total cases, and cases are also rising in Pennsylvania and Virginia. We're exclusively reporting that the Agriculture Department is lifting a ban on importing cattle from Mexico. Cattle imports were cut off last year to try to stop the spread of a parasite called a screw worm. It's not a food safety risk, but it's deadly to animals. Mexico typically sends about a million calves across the border each year, and losing those cattle has made a livestock shortage in the U.S. even worse. That shortage has sent prices for ground beef and steak to record levels. Now, lifting the ban could lower those prices, but the move is contentious, as U.S. ranchers are concerned about the spread of the parasite. The U.S. plans to resume imports in 30 days.

For the past two days, an FDA advisory committee has held hearings about peptides. They voted on a series of seven peptides, an injectable substance that promises physical transformations. These substances haven't undergone regulatory approval. They're very popular on social media, and these days are usually obtained through an online gray market. The FDA panel has voted in favor of easing restrictions on six of the seven peptides in question. Alex Janen covers health and wellness for the journal and has been watching the meetings. Alex, the peptides that the panel voted on, what are they supposed to do? They have been marketed for... all sorts of reasons. A majority of people who take them are people who are really interested in optimizing their health. They're really interested in performance. Some might even refer to themselves as biohackers. Maybe they are taking them for purported muscle recovery, anti-aging purposes, or a more youthful skin. These haven't been rigorously evaluated claims. So a lot of the evidence is anecdotal thus far. Why was the panel considering this now? Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. himself has talked about being not only a supporter, but a patient and a user of some of these peptides. And there are recently appointed members to this advisory committee to the FDA that were appointed under his tenure. And some of them have direct ties to businesses that use peptides. So six of seven of the peptides are going to the FDA with a yes vote from this committee. And FDA has a history of following what the advisory committees recommend. In each case, the committee members are encouraged to explain their vote. In the no cases, they tend to say, look, we don't have enough data. on these compounds. We don't know how safe they are. We don't know how efficacious they are. In the yes cases, generally they are saying, Yes, it's true. We don't know a lot about these peptides, but we have a pretty good sense based on how many patients are already using them, getting them through the gray market, that they're pretty safe. And we would like to gather more data on their efficacy. And the only way we'll be able to gather more data is by making them more accessible. And just by having more oversight, the proponents argue it will be a safer system. Assuming the FDA then... accepts the panel's recommendation. What does that mean for patient access? Right now, patients are getting research-grade products, often labeled not for human use, often from overseas. It's very unregulated and arguably dangerous. If FDA decides to go with the committee's recommendation, patients will be able to legally obtain with a doctor's prescription these peptides from...

legal compounding facilities in the United States. That was journal reporter Alex Janin. Thank you, Alex. Thank you. And if you want to know more about Americans' fascination with peptides, we'll leave a link to our What's New Sunday episode on peptides in the show notes. Paramount has delayed the close of its $81 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery. The entertainment company says the deal won't move forward until legal issues are resolved, or until June 2027, whichever comes first. That's because a group of 12 states has brought an antitrust challenge to the Paramount deal. In earnings news today, Verizon missed analyst expectations on revenue in the second quarter, but beat them on a closely watched metric for lucrative new wireless customers. The company is also pursuing new business opportunities from the AI infrastructure boom. Its stock closed up almost 6%. Sales for American Express rose 10% in the quarter because people who have its credit cards spent more. But the company just missed Wall Street revenue estimates, and its share price fell 4.3%. Markets are stabilizing after a wild week. Oil gave up some of its gains, with the international benchmark rent crude falling 3.9%. It's at just under $97 a barrel. U.S. stock indexes were mixed. The NASDAQ fell 0.6%, while the Dow rose half a percent. The S&P barely budged. For the week, both the NASDAQ and S&P were negative, and after also dropping last week, both had their first backed-back weekly losses since March. Coming up, new tariffs went into effect today. What is the legal basis for them? And can we expect more tariffs to come? We'll get into more trade news and more of the day's stories after the break.

This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cybercriminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. RelyQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. ReliaQuest, agentic defense for the enterprise. Learn more at ReliQuest.com. That's r-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T.com. This morning, new tariffs went into effect on major U.S. trade partners. The Supreme Court in February struck down a lot of the Trump administration's tariffs, but trade lawyers say these new ones will better withstand legal scrutiny. For more on how they work and where President Trump's trade agenda goes from here, I'm joined now by WSJ Trade and Economic Policy reporter Gavin Bade. Gavin, I want to start by talking about the reason for the tariffs, labor practices. Countries that have laws on the books against forced labor got a 10% tariff, while those with... Without laws like that, got a 12.5% tariff. Can you explain what the administration says other countries are doing here? Well, the U.S. is accusing countries of not properly policing. products that are maybe made with forced labor from coming into their country. Something like cotton from the Xinjiang region of China. A lot of U.Gar Muslims are under forced labor conditions. We in the U.S., we have a law against importing anything from Xinjiang because of that. Other countries have similar laws for a number of industries. What the U.S. is accusing them of is not enforcing those laws sufficiently. That is certainly news to many of our trading partners who say that they have been focused on this issue long. before the United States, but that is the pretext for these tariffs. Right. So you use the word pretext. Is forced labor really the thing that the Trump administration is pushing to address here? Or are they really just looking for a way to have the tariffs that they want? Well, it can be both things. Certainly on paper, they are very serious about this forced labor stuff. The U.S. Trade Representative Jameson Greer, he's worked on this issue before. But at the same time, they've been very clear that they were going to rebuild the tariff wall that the Supreme Court tore down. And it just so happens that the tariff levels in this investigation really correspond very closely to the tariff that was going to expire. Because remember, after the Supreme Court struck down Trump's tariffs, he put in place a temporary 10% tariff on just... basically all imports across the board. And then that was going to expire. And so they had to get their act together and get this thing out before the other tariffs expired. And now instead of a 10% temporary tariff, we're at 10 to 12.5%. Basically the same thing. These new rules are expected to better withstand legal challenges than the previous tariff rules. Why is that?

Yeah, because they're based on a more tried and trusted section of trade law. This is called Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act. And it allows the president to put tariffs on another country if the president finds that they are discriminating against U.S. goods. So in this case, they say if you're importing goods made with forced labor, they're artificially cheaper than ones made by U.S. companies. And so we're going to put a tariff on you. The section of trade law has been used a lot before. It just really requires you to do an investigation on the front end and take comments from industry and do your paperwork. Once you do, you can put tariffs in place. They can stay in place indefinitely. This is a pretty well-tested section of trade law. But yeah, I do think we'll see at least one legal challenge. A lot of importers will be able to say that they're being harmed by this and they will challenge the president's justification for these tariffs. These things will have to work their way through the courts. In the meantime, the president has... a lot of other tariffs coming down the pike here. You know, this is one Section 301 investigation, but he has another one that is looking at alleged industrial overcapacity, basically countries like China using subsidies to juice their export machine. We're going to see more tariffs on China and other countries in the coming months because of that. And that will probably help Trump get back up to the level of tariffs that he was at before the Supreme Court decision. We're at around 11% average tariff rate right now. Before the Supreme Court decision, we were at 17. Most analysts I talk to think we get to about 17 by the time the year is done. That was WSJ Trade and Economic Policy Reporter, Gavin Bade. Thank you, Gavin. Thanks, Alex. The Trump administration might be adding even more tariffs soon. Today, President Trump threatened to apply additional tariffs on goods from the European Union. It's a response to Europe's fines on U.S. tech firms, including the $1 billion the EU fined Google earlier this week for breaking digital competition rules. The U.S. Trade Representatives Office will open an investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act. That's the same provision. As you just heard Gavin explain, that's the basis for the tariffs that went into effect today. And speaking of tariffs, heads up that we made a correction to yesterday's episode. The new U.S. tariffs target 60 economies or more than 80 countries. An earlier version of the podcast incorrectly said the tariffs target 60 countries.

The International Criminal Court has ousted chief prosecutor Kareem Khan over sexual assault allegations. For months, diplomats have examined allegations made by an aide to Kahn who said that he coerced her into sex. Today, in a tense session at the United Nations headquarters in New York, the court's member nations voted to remove Kahn. The vote was 82 to 13, with 15 abstentions. One of Kahn's most polarizing moves was his decision to seek arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israel's former defense minister, Joav Galant, accusing them of war crimes and crimes against humanity for their conduct of the war in Gaza. Kahn's been on leave since May 2025, after the Wall Street Journal reported on the seriousness of the assault allegations facing him. He denies any sexual misconduct. The ICC's future is uncertain. The Trump administration has sanctioned its judges and officials, while Secretary of State Marco Rubio says the U.S. plans to dismantle the court. And that's what's news for this week. Tomorrow you can look out for our weekly markets wrap up, What's News and Markets. Then on Sunday we'll be discussing how artificial intelligence is coming for the aviation industry. That's in What's News Sunday. And we'll be back with our regular show on Monday morning. Today's show is produced by Danny Lewis with supervising producer Tali Arbell. Michael LaValle wrote our theme music. Ishael Mousalem is our development producer. Chris Zinsley is our deputy editor. And I'm Alex Jon Ossoff. Have a great weekend. And thanks for listening.

This podcast is brought to you by ReliaQuest. Cybercriminals are constantly attacking. They want your data. They want your identity. They want your innovation. RelyQuest fortifies your business with agentic defense, AI that detects, contains, and eliminates cyber threats in minutes. It helps your security team move faster at the work that matters most to protect the business now and delivers insights to help them predict what's next. ReliaQuest. Agentic Defense for the Enterprise. Learn more at ReliQuest.com. That's r-E-L-I-A-Q-U-E-S-T.com.