The Writers Guild of America West said on X that its negotiating committee unanimously approved a tentative agreement with The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios. The alliance confirmed the deal in a separate statement on its website Saturday.

“We look forward to building on this progress as we continue working toward agreements that support long-term industry stability,” read the alliance statement.

The Writers Guild of America West and The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios, said they have reached a new four-year deal. logoboom – stock.adobe.com

The precise terms of the deals were not immediately announced, but it is expected to include several writers’ priorities such as better health care plans and more protections against artificial intelligence. The union said on X that the deal protects the writers’ health plan builds on gains from 2023 and “helps address free work challenges.”

The contract agreement, a year longer than a typical three-year deal, must be approved by the guild’s board and members before it is ratified.

The surprise agreement came within weeks of negotiation — a stark contrast to the contentious contract negotiation three years ago when Hollywood writers went on a historic strike that partially brought the industry to a standstill.

The screenwriters voted almost unanimously to approve that agreement, which provided them with more compensation, length of employment and control of artificial intelligence. The current contract was set to expire in May.

The Writers Guild of America West last went on strike in 2023. AP

The studios were also working on new deals with union leaders representing actors and directors, whose contracts are set to expire at the end of June. Sean Astin, president of the SAG-AFTRA, said in a February interview with the Associated Press that he has seen signs that the studios want “to work as partners again.” Hollywood actors also walked out of their jobs for months in 2023 demanding for a better contract.

The writers’ tentative deal with studios came as the Writers Guild of America West faces an ongoing strike by its own staff union that started in February. More than 100 people working in legal, events and residuals departments went on strike over allegations of unfair labor practice, according to the Los Angeles Times.

It is not clear how, or whether, the weekslong strike would have an impact on the tentative deal with the studios. The union announced last month it canceled its annual award ceremony because of the staff union strike.

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Brin plunked down a whopping $42 million last month on a Lake Tahoe estate in Nevada. Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has also been quietly amassing luxury properties just over the state line, snapping up multimillion-dollar homes in elite Nevada enclaves like Crystal Bay and Incline Village — prized for their private beaches, gated estates, and sweeping panoramic views of the lake.

Oracle founder Larry Ellison is one of the billionaires flocking to a small California border enclave. REUTERS

Big-money billionaires, including Larry Ellison and Sergey Brin (above), are flocking to ritzy little enclaves Getty Images for Breakthrough Prize

Brin plunked down a whopping $42 million last month on a Lake Tahoe estate in Nevada New York Post

Crystal Bay — where Brin bought his mansion — is located on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in Nevada’s Washoe County. It offers plenty of privacy to residents, with a population just over 300 people according to the 2020 Census.

Brin’s new pad boasts 16,232 square feet of living space, including seven bedrooms, 12 bathrooms, a 10-seat theater, a 1,687-bottle wine cellar and 13 fireplaces.

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The mansion also comes with 525 feet of lakefront property, complete with two boat lifts, a seasonal boat barge and its very own beach house.

Incline Village, also located on the north shore of Lake Tahoe in Washoe County has a larger population, with around 10,000 people, but still offers incredible views of the lake.

The mansion also comes with 525 feet of lakefront property, complete with two boat lifts, a seasonal boat barge and its very own beach house. New York Post

Ellison further cut ties with CA when he recently sold his sprawling 11,000 square foot five bedroom San Francisco mansion in Pacific Heights for $45 million at the end of 2025.

“Given the billions in potential damage to his fiscal house if the California Billionaire Wealth Tax actually passed in November, I would suspect that Mr. Ellison was advised that retaining a California residence was not worth the risk of some future tax claim that he was domiciled in California,” David Lesperance, a leading billionaire tax advisor, told The Post.

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The CA ballot initiative, called the “2026 Billionaire Tax Act,” would “impose a one-time tax of 5 percent on the net worth of the state’s billionaires,” according to the Tax Foundation. It is expected to be on the ballot in November of 2026.

President Donald Trump’s tech Czar, billionaire David Sacks, called the billionaire tax theft.

“This is not a tax — this is asset seizure,” Sacks said from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “It’s not a one time, it’s a first time.”

Sacks left CA for Texas after more than two decades of lefty policies in the state.

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While those fees are paid by the store every time a customer makes a transaction, they often get passed onto consumers through higher costs for goods and services. 

These fees are commonly referred to as swipe fees or interchange fees, which the National Retail Federation (NRF) argued added inflationary pressure to the US economy, driving up prices for households nationwide.

These fees often fall between 2% and 2.5%. But under the long-awaited deal, which would end 20 years of litigation, Mastercard and Visa agreed to lower the fees that businesses pay when customers use their credit cards by about one-tenth of a percent on most US credit card purchases for five years, according to regulatory filings.

This means merchants would pay 0.1% less per transaction, which could save retailers and consumers money when spread across millions of purchases.

The NRF has long argued that swipe fees are one of the highest operating expenses for retailers, which it said drives up consumer prices by over $1,200 a year for the average family. 

Mastercard and Visa agreed to lower the fees that businesses pay when customers use their credit cards by about one-tenth of a percent on most US credit card purchases for five years, according to regulatory filings. Getty Images/iStockphoto

Stephanie Martz, NRF chief administrative officer and general counsel, said the planned reduction announced in Monday’s settlement doesn’t go far enough and that “it is a small fraction of the 2.35% average swipe fee charged to merchants in 2024 and equivalent to rolling back fees by only about one year.” Martz said swipe fees have grown by three times as much since 2010 and averaged 2.26% in 2023. She believes the new proposed settlement should be rejected.

The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) echoed this sentiment, saying that the settlement should be rejected because “it will not benefit merchants and consumers and would provide the credit card giants legal immunity to increase fees and anti-competitive practices.”

Mastercard told FOX Business that it believes the deal is the “best resolution for all parties, delivering the clarity, flexibility and consumer protections that were sought in this effort.” 

With the deal, Mastercard said smaller merchants will gain more acceptance choices, reduced costs and simplified rules.

“Even more, it allows us to focus our energies on continuing to give consumers, small businesses and larger merchants what they expect from Mastercard – a better payments experience, strong value and peace of mind,” the company said.

Visa said the proposed settlement with US merchants of all sizes “would provide meaningful relief, more flexibility and options to control how they accept payments from their customers.” 

The National Retail Federation said the settlement doesn’t go far enough and “it is a small fraction of the 2.35% average swipe fee charged to merchants in 2024 and equivalent to rolling back fees by only about one year.” AP

The terms of the deal would also give merchants more power by loosening the requirements that state that if they accept one of the network’s cards, they would be required to accept all of them. For example, stores could choose whether to take consumer cards, business cards, or both.

Within consumer cards, they could decide whether to accept standard cards, premium rewards cards, or both. But merchants can’t pick and choose between banks, which means they can’t accept a Chase Visa but reject a Citi Visa if both are the same card type.

The deal still needs to be approved by a federal judge in the Eastern District of New York before it becomes final. The settlement would resolve ongoing US merchant litigation against Mastercard and Visa that is related to interchange fees and merchant rules.

Both companies were sued by merchants over how they set and enforce credit-card swipe fees and rules that limit how merchants can steer customers toward cheaper payment methods. Those cases have been ongoing since 2005. The companies have not admitted any wrongdoing.

The changes to its fee system and card-acceptance rules aren’t expected to take effect until the court approves the settlement, which is expected sometime in late 2026 or early 2027.

The post Visa, Mastercard reach swipe-fee settlement — Here’s how it will affect your wallet appeared first on Our Story Insight.

President Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping will officially “consummate” that deal when they meet in Busan, South Korea on Thursday — marking the first time the two have seen each other in person since 2019.

“We reached a final deal on TikTok,” Bessent told CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “We reached one in Madrid, and I believe that as of today, all the details are ironed out, and that will be for the two leaders to consummate that transaction on Thursday in Korea.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on CBS News’ Face the Nation with
Margaret Brennan on October 26, 2025. CBS News

Trump had signed an executive order last month to pave the way for the TikTok transfer deal, but the two sides still had a few details to figure out at the time.

Bessent declined to provide additional details about the finalized deal, noting that he wasn’t “part of the commercial side of the transaction.”

“My remit was to get the Chinese to agree to approve the transaction, and I believe we successfully accomplished that over the past two days,” he explained.

Chinese President Xi Jinping speaks during a meeting on Oct. 14, 2025. AP

Under the framework unveiled last month in Trump’s executive order, TikTok’s parent company ByteDance will own less than 20% of the popular video-sharing platform and “certain investors” will get 80% of it. 

That would comply with legislation passed by Congress and signed into law by former President Joe Biden last year mandating that TikTok be divested from its Chinese Communist Party-linked ownership due to US national security concerns. 

Trump has repeatedly delayed the deadline for TikTok to be divested to buy time for negotiations to play out. If BytDance refused to divest, TikTok would’ve been banned from key app stores in the US. 

The US and China have finalized a deal to transfer the majority ownership of TikTok. FellowNeko – stock.adobe.com

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The president previously said that Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, tech mogul Michael Dell and News Corp Chairman Emeritus Rupert Murdoch will play a role in the TikTok deal.

It’s unclear if anything significant changed during the finalization of the deal. 

Bessent also indicated that Trump plans to withdraw the 155% tariff rate he threatened against Beijing last week due to frustrations over China’s plans to tighten export controls on its rare earth processing. That 155% tariff rate would’ve taken effect on Nov. 1, according to Trump. Currently, the US has a roughly 55% tariff rate levied on most imports from China. 

“It would be an extra 100% from where we are now, and I believe that that is effectively off the table,” Bessent said. “I’m not going to get ahead of the two leaders who will be meeting in Korea on Thursday, but I can tell you we had a very good two days.”

“So I would expect that the threat of the 100% has gone away, as has the threat of the immediate imposition of the Chinese initiating a worldwide export control regime.”

The Treasury secretary also teased that “soybean farmers are going to be extremely happy with this deal for this year and for the coming years,” without elaborating.

Critics accused the Trump administration of harming US soybean farmers with a $20 billion currency swap given to Argentina, fretting that propping up Buenos Aires’ economy would enable the Latin American country to sell more soybeans to China. 

“Those soybeans were always going to get purchased. They just did it at a time when the Argentines had lifted their export taxes. So those soybeans were always going to be on the market,” Bessent countered. 

“I believe that we have brought the market back into equilibrium, and I believe that the Chinese will be making substantial purchases again.”

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