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WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Americans are inundated with scam attempts on a daily basis — and about 3 in 10 have personally lost money or personal information to scams, according to a new AP-NORC survey.

The poll, conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research in February, highlights the obstacle course that U.S. adults navigate daily as they screen calls, ignore messages or try to puzzle out if that urgent request from their cellphone provider is legitimate.

A separate survey conducted by Gallup and the Stop Scams Alliance that was provided exclusively to the AP found that last year alone, about 1 in 10 U.S. adults said they or someone else from their household was deceived by a scammer into losing money or providing access to a financial account, with nearly half saying they lost more than $500.

That leaves many Americans feeling like they’re constantly at risk of falling for a scam, often without a sense of recourse. In both surveys, few victims said they reported the scam to the federal government or local law enforcement. Many victims didn’t report the scam, Gallup found, because they didn’t think it would make a difference in getting money back.

“You’ve got to be pretty sophisticated these days,” said Adam Pratter, 42. He has run into problems on dating apps — and once ended up sending money to a person who claimed they were overseas because of a military deployment and needed money to buy food. He realized it was a scam when the requests didn’t stop.

Pratter thinks banks and social media companies have a responsibility to help people who have been scammed, but also believes the government needs to do more.

“If federal regulation wanted to step in and make deals with these companies to get these people their money back, they could,” he said.

Americans are flooded with scam attempts, according to both surveys. More than half, 58%, of U.S. adults in the AP-NORC poll said they receive daily text messages, phone calls, emails, online messages or online advertisements that they suspect are scams, while the Gallup survey found last year that about 4 in 10 experienced attempted scams on a daily basis.

Porschel Smith, 22, gets multiple scam calls every day, and receives even more scam emails. Some of the scams are easy for her to identify. “They mention different types of programs that I know are nonexistent,” she said.

But sometimes she ends up engaging with the scammer before realizing that something is wrong. “Some of them hack your account and pretend as if they’re someone that you know,” she said. “But then I get to asking questions and realize they’re scams.”

Older people are more likely to say they receive scam attempts daily, according to the AP-NORC poll. About 7 in 10 U.S. adults ages 60 and older say they are contacted by a suspected scammer at least once a day, compared to about 4 in 10 Americans under 30.

Among those who have received suspected scam attempts, the AP-NORC poll found that outreach involving package shipments or banking were among the most common methods. About 4 in 10 people who were contacted by scammers say at least one of the attempts they received over the past few years were through Facebook or Facebook Messenger, while about 2 in 10 said they were on WhatsApp, and a similar share said they were on Instagram.

The impact of scams is far-reaching. About half, 51%, of U.S. adults know someone personally — such as a friend or family member — who has ever lost money as the result of a scam, the AP-NORC poll found, while about 3 in 10 U.S. adults say they have personally been scammed into giving away money or personal information.

The Gallup survey found that about 1 in 10 U.S. adults said they or a member of their household was scammed out of money in 2025, with 6% saying they had been personally scammed.

About half of people whose household experienced scams last year reported losing between $125 and $2,000, according to Gallup.

About 1 in 10 U.S. adults have been scammed multiple times, Gallup found.

“It’s not easy. They know what they’re doing,” said Towonna Harris, 50. Her son was once contacted by scammers who promised to give him money for tuition if he authorized a nominal credit card charge, which quickly spiraled into a much bigger set of charges.

She’s experienced other kinds of scams on a smaller scale, too. “I ordered some stuff. I never got it,” she said. “I thought it was a legitimate company. And then I saw all these reviews saying it was a scam.”

Virtually all U.S. adults believe that scams pose a “major” or “minor” threat to individuals in the U.S., but few think the government is doing enough to solve the problem. About 8 in 10 Americans say the government is “definitely” or “probably” doing too little to prevent scams, according to the Gallup survey, including large majorities of Republicans and Democrats.

When people are scammed, both surveys found that victims are much likelier to reach out to financial institutions than the federal government or local law enforcement. About half, 55%, of people who were scammed last year reported to a bank, credit union or other financial institution, the Gallup poll found, but only 18% contacted state or local law enforcement, while 13% reported to either federal law enforcement or the Federal Trade Commission.

Many victims don’t make a report because they don’t think it will help, or don’t know where to go, Gallup found. Among people who were scammed in 2025, 75% said they didn’t report because they thought it wouldn’t make a difference in getting their money back, while 58% were uncertain where to report.

More broadly, Americans express very low confidence that they’d know how to report a scam to the government if they needed to. According to the AP-NORC poll, most Americans, 55%, say they are “extremely” or “very” confident that if they were scammed, they’d know how to report it to banks or credit card companies, but only about one-quarter are similarly confident that they’d know how to report to federal or state law enforcement.

Only about one-third of U.S. adults said they would know where to make a report if they lost $5,000 in a scam today, Gallup found.

Max Anderson, 23, said that his parents are small business owners who were the victims of a costly and complex scam. “A scammer successfully imitated one of their employees and changed their direct deposit information. This went on for about 3 months. It went to $15,000,” he said.

Eventually, Anderson’s father got help from the FBI, he said.

“I do like that the government stepped in with my parents, and I feel like that’s the way it should be,” he said. “It’s a big enough problem at this point that it falls to the government and companies to do something about it.”

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Associated Press reporters Mary Rajkumar, Juliet Linderman and Erika Kinetz contributed to this report. Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism student Molly Wallace contributed to this report.

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The AP-NORC poll of 1,133 adults was conducted Feb. 19-23 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4.0 percentage points.

The Stop Scams Alliance-Gallup poll of 5,173 adults was conducted Jan. 8-Feb. 18 using a sample drawn from Gallup’s probability-based Gallup Panel. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 1.4 percentage points.

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The parents of a girl who was raped when she was 12 years old by an adult stranger she met on Snapchat have sued its parent company, Snap, and the attacker in Missouri state court.

The lawsuit filed Wednesday claims the social media company has refused to disable dangerous features in its app or warn parents about potential harms it may cause.

According to the lawsuit, the girl began using Snapchat in 2021, when she was 11, without her parents’ knowledge. While the app requires users to be 13 to sign up, the lawsuit says the girl does not remember what birth date she entered and that children knew they could easily bypass the minimum-age requirement.

About a year after she began using Snapchat, the lawsuit says the app recommended her and teen girls from nearby high schools as friends to defendant Gabriel Joel Valentin-Rios, an adult who had no real-life connections to them. It did not warn the children that connecting to strangers might be dangerous.

After the girl and Valentin-Rios connected, Valentin-Rios began sending her unsolicited nude photographs, the lawsuit says. The girl “did not want these photographs and, at first, did not reciprocate but Snapchat’s product design made it impossible for (her) to avoid such explicit content,” it says.

As part of its Snap Maps feature, the app also provided Valentin-Rios with the girl’s home address without her knowledge, according to the lawsuit. Valentin-Rios then groomed the girl, convincing her that he was a 17-year-old local high school boy, not a 25-year-old man. Eventually he got her to meet him in person and raped her.

Valentin-Rios pleaded guilty to statutory rape and is currently serving an 18-year prison sentence in Missouri.

The lawsuit claims Snapchat knew that Valentin-Rios had multiple accounts — even though it is against the app’s policies — including one he used to lure teen girls.

“We care deeply about the safety and well-being of all Snapchatters, and our teams have worked for years to build safeguards, launch safety tutorials, partner with experts, and work with law enforcement to help prevent the misuse of our platform,” Snap said in a statement.

The girl has been diagnosed with PTSD, anxiety and depression, according to the lawsuit.

The plaintiffs seek unspecified damages and are asking the court to compel Snap to stop practices that harm children.

“This assault did not happen in a vacuum — it happened because Snapchat’s product design made it easy for a predator to reach and manipulate an unsuspecting child,” said Matthew Bergman, founder of the Social Media Victims Law Center, which brought the suit on behalf of the plaintiffs. “Snap executives have long known that their features create a perfect environment for predators to exploit children, yet they have repeatedly failed to make the platform safe.”

This is not the first such lawsuit against Snap. New Mexico sued the company in 2024, saying the platform’s design features foster sextortion, sexual abuse and unwanted contact from adults to minors. According to the lawsuit, Snap was well aware, but failed to warn parents, young users and the public that “sextortion was a rampant, ‘massive,’ and ‘incredibly concerning issue’ on Snapchat.” A judge denied the company’s motion to dismiss last year.

There are also individual lawsuits pending against the company, including one in Vermont on behalf of two 12-year-old girls who were sexually assaulted by an adult they met on Snapchat.

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By Colleen Howe

BEIJING, June 25 (Reuters) – Oil prices extended their decline on Thursday, edging closer to pre-war levels as stranded tankers exited the Strait of Hormuz following an initial accord to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, easing supply concerns.

Prompt-month Brent crude futures for August delivery fell 40 cents, or 0.54%, to $73.34 a barrel as of 0004 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate fell 27 cents, or 0.38%, to $70.07 a barrel.

August Brent was trading lower than September, which was priced at $73.59, signalling ample short-term supply.

“The speed of this decline has caught plenty off guard as markets price in a much faster return of Middle Eastern barrels than most had anticipated just a fortnight ago,” IG analyst Tony Sycamore said in a note.

Brent had fallen more than $3 on Wednesday as supply concerns eased, and WTI settled down nearly $3.

U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told a forum on Wednesday that flows through the Strait of Hormuz were close to what they were before the start of the Iran war, saying at least 20 million barrels had exited the strait in the last 24 hours. He added a return to complete normalcy would take a few weeks because the strait needs to be demined.

An initial accord last week to end the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which began on February 28, has allowed traffic through the strait to restart.

The accord set up a 60-day period of negotiations to tackle more difficult issues including Iran’s nuclear program. Wright said oil would continue to flow through the strait even if the deal did not hold, and that Iran would not be able to close it again.

Oman on Wednesday opened temporary routes to ease tanker departures from the Strait of Hormuz, with the International Maritime Organization and Omani authorities coordinating movements. Qatar’s prime minister visited Oman for talks on initiating negotiations over the strait’s future management with Iran, Iraq and Gulf states.

U.S. total crude stocks hit their lowest since 1984 last week, the Energy Information Administration said on Wednesday, on strong refining demand and as the government released oil from its emergency reserve. Markets, however, appeared unfazed by the EIA data as traders focused on the Strait of Hormuz.

(Reporting by Colleen Howe; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) – The U.S. Department of Justice said on Wednesday that The Chemours Company agreed to a $450 million settlement over the release of “forever chemicals” in West Virginia, North Carolina and New Jersey.

(Reporting by Katharine Jackson and Daphne Psaledakis; Editing by Doina Chiacu)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The IRS did better than expected getting refunds out to taxpayers during the 2026 tax season despite massive cuts to its workforce — but the national taxpayer advocate says taxpayers who needed human help were left behind.

“Taxpayers who required assistance from the IRS often struggled to get it,” said Erin M. Collins, who leads the independent watchdog agency of the IRS.

Collins earlier this year warned that the 2026 tax filing season was likely to present challenges for taxpayers who encounter problems with filing their taxes given the exodus of IRS workers since the start of the Trump administration.

The IRS started 2025 with about 102,000 employees and finished with about 74,000 after a series of firings and layoffs brought on by the Department of Government Efficiency, headed by trillionaire Elon Musk. Last year, IRS employees involved in the 2025 tax season were not allowed to accept a buyout offer from the Trump administration until after the taxpayer filing deadline. This year, many of those customer service workers have left.

Collins in a new mid-year report said that overall, the IRS performed better than she expected. “The vast majority of taxpayers filed their returns successfully and received their refunds without significant delay.”

Technology improvements and automation helped prevent a total meltdown during the tax season, according to the report, released Wednesday.

However, the agency fell short in answering phones, the report said. Some 59% of calls on major accounts management lines were answered, but taxpayers on compliance lines got through only 34% of the time, and the line that handles identity theft victims got through only 19% of the time.

Identity theft victims overall have to wait nearly two years for help from the IRS, the report said. This is a longstanding issue at the agency.

The taxpayer advocate report says more than 500,000 identity-theft victims continue to face average case resolution times of roughly 20 months, with average processing times approaching 600 days.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has reached a multi-state settlement with chemical giant Chemours Co. over years-long, illegal discharges of synthetic “forever chemicals” used to make products resistant to water, grease and stains. The settlement is the first by the federal government to resolve enforcement claims against a manufacturer of harmful chemicals known as PFAS.

The Associated Press learned details of the settlement ahead of an announcement expected later Wednesday.

Under the agreement, Chemours will pay a civil penalty of $22.5 million for alleged violations and spend $90 million over 15 years to mitigate PFAS discharges in three states: West Virginia, North Carolina and New Jersey.

Chemours, a spin-off of chemical maker DuPont, also agreed to install PFAS pollution controls for and surface water discharges and air emissions at a West Virginia facility; supply clean drinking water to communities near its West Virginia and New Jersey sites; and implement controls to reduce releases of PFAS and other toxic chemicals from its facility in North Carolina.

Combined, the penalties and relief programs are estimated to cost about $450 million, the Justice Department said.

The settlement allows Chemours to continue manufacturing PFAS for commercial and military applications while preventing future contamination and protecting communities from existing pollution, said Adam Gustafson, principal deputy assistant Attorney General for the Environment and Natural Resources Division.

“The Trump administration recognizes the important role of Chemours for it commercial and military obligations,” Gustafson said in an interview. “The settlement protects public health while preserving that important balance.”

The settlement against a major PFAS manufacturer “delivers on the Trump administration’s promise to make polluters pay and stop PFAS contamination at the source,” said Jeffrey Hall, assistant EPA administrator for enforcement and compliance assurance.

The agreement will greatly reduce PFAS contamination of water, land and air and even begin to mitigate past harm, Hall said. “This settlement brings Chemours into compliance with the law and holds it fully accountable,” he said.

The settlement comes as the Trump administration is expected to propose softening Biden-era limits on “forever chemicals” in drinking water, while delaying but keeping tough standards for two common types of the substance.

The proposal will start the formal process of rolling back parts of the first-ever limits on PFAS in drinking water finalized during former President Joe Biden’s administration. Officials at the time found they increased the risk of cardiovascular disease, certain cancers and babies being born with low birth weight.

The agency is committed to addressing Per- and Polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in drinking water while following the law and ensuring that regulatory compliance is achievable for drinking water systems, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said.

The settlement determined that facilities Chemours operates in the three states have discharged PFAS into the Ohio River, Cape Fear River and Delaware River, respectively, in violation of permits required by the Clean Water Act and state laws. Chemours also violated legal requirements under the federal Toxic Substances Control Act at all three facilities.

As a result of the alleged violations, people living near the facilities were exposed to illegal PFAS, officials said. PFAS are widely used and found around the world, with scientific studies showing that exposure to some PFAS in the environment may be linked to harmful health effects in humans and animals.

The violations continued for over a decade, the Justice Department said. The facilities were previously owned for many decades by DuPont. The settlement announced Wednesday does not resolve DuPont’s liability for past PFAS violations, officials said.

A federal judge last year ordered Chemours to stop discharging unlawful levels of cancer-causing chemicals into the Ohio River from the company’s Washington Works plant in West Virginia. The pollutants endanger the environment, aquatic life and human health, U.S. District Judge Joseph Goodwin wrote in the August 2025 order.

The West Virginia Rivers Coalition had asked Goodwin to require the company to immediately comply with its permit limits after violating them for more than five years.

DuPont, Chemours and another company, Corteva, agreed to pay New Jersey up to $2 billion last year to settle environmental claims stemming from PFAS. The federal settlement does not affect the state case.

The federal consent decree calls for 14 specific treatment systems to reduce PFAS in wastewater, stormwater and groundwater from the West Virginia plant. Chemours will test drinking water near the West Virginia and New Jersey sites and provide treated or alternative clean water.

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By Jonathan Stempel

June 24 (Reuters) – Pfizer has been dismissed as a defendant in a sweeping antitrust lawsuit in which most U.S. states accused dozens of drugmakers and executives of fixing generic drug prices.

In a decision on Tuesday, Chief Judge Michael Shea of the federal district court in Connecticut said the states failed to show that Pfizer and its former Greenstone unit conspired with rivals between 2010 and 2014 to rig bids and allocate customers for six drug products.

These included generic versions of Eplerenone tablets for high blood pressure, Latanoprost drops for glaucoma, and four versions of Clindamycin phosphate for acne.

The states alleged that Greenstone executives exchanged more than 360 phone calls and text messages with the Swiss drugmaker Sandoz to coordinate anticompetitive activity.

But the judge said no reasonable jury could find that New York-based Pfizer directly conspired to fix prices, knew of collusion by Greenstone when asked to approve price changes, or was liable because Greenstone — the authorized generic manufacturer of Pfizer-branded drugs — acted as its agent.

“Greenstone existed for the purpose of selling generic drugs for profit in addition to the strategic value that it provided to its parent company,” Shea wrote. “The states’ contention that it existed for the sole purpose of acting on its parent company’s behalf falls short.”

LAWSUIT COVERS 80 GENERIC DRUGS

The dismissal came in a lawsuit brought by 45 U.S. states, the District of Columbia and four U.S. territories, accusing 36 defendants of conspiring to fix prices of 80 generic drugs, primarily for skin ailments.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has led the litigation, and New York Attorney General Letitia James filed papers opposing Pfizer’s dismissal motion.

Tong’s office had no immediate comment on Wednesday. James’ office declined to comment.

Pfizer spun off Greenstone in a 2020 transaction that created Viatris.

In a statement, Pfizer said it was pleased with the dismissal. It also said Greenstone was a “reliable and trusted supplier of affordable generic medicines for decades, and we will continue to vigorously defend against these claims.”

Shea oversees two other antitrust lawsuits by state attorneys general related to generic drugs. Pfizer is a defendant in one of those cases.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York, Editing by Louise Heavens)

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By Ashitha Shivaprasad

June 24 (Reuters) – Bullion-backed exchange-traded funds could face renewed outflows if investors continue to increase their bets on interest rate hikes, analysts say — a factor that could pull already falling gold prices lower.

Spot gold prices slipped below a key psychological level of $4,000 per ounce level for the first time since November 2025 on Wednesday, under pressure from a firmer U.S. dollar and growing expectations that interest rates will remain elevated.

“ETF flows are closely linked to U.S. monetary policy, as reflected in the buying and selling of physically backed products,” said Julius Baer analyst Carsten Menke. 

GOLD ETFS STILL SEEING OUTFLOWS IN EARLY JUNE

World Gold Council data shows gold-backed ETFs recorded net outflows of 16 metric tons in May and continued to see outflows in the first half of June, although funds last week registered their strongest weekly net inflows since mid-April.

“While recent inflows suggest selling pressure may be easing, ETF demand is likely to remain less supportive than it was in 2025,” analysts at ING said. 

Standard Chartered in a note said that at current price levels, more than 200 tons of gold in exchange-traded funds are in loss-making territory. 

Higher rates typically weigh on non-yielding gold.

Expectations that the U.S. Federal Reserve will trim interest rates this year were a key factor behind gold’s record-breaking rally in 2025, sweeping spot prices to an all-time high of $5,594.82 per ounce in January.

However, rising energy prices in the wake of the Iran war have fuelled inflation concerns, leading central banks including the Fed to adopt a more hawkish tone and investors to scale up bets on rate hikes, rather than cuts.

Gold prices have retreated around 29% from January’s peak. [GOL/]

“Rising rate forecasts plus huge AI cash-raising suggest a bullish view of the U.S., if not global, economy,” said Adrian Ash, head of research at online marketplace BullionVault.

“While that doesn’t mean gold is fated to fall, investor attention is most certainly elsewhere right now.”

ETF VS OFFICIAL SECTOR DEMAND

While remaining constructive on gold, some major banks have identified soft ETF demand as a growing headwind to the metal’s further upside. 

Morgan Stanley said its $5,200-per-ounce gold forecast for the second half of 2026 appears increasingly dependent on a revival in ETF buying and evidence that lower oil prices are feeding through to a more dovish interest-rate outlook.

Goldman Sachs also tempered its optimism, lowering its December gold price forecast and reducing its projections for ETF demand. 

Analysts say that while softer ETF demand could weigh on bullion in the near term, central bank purchases — another key driver behind gold’s rally last year — are likely to remain a key source of support. 

“If official sector demand continues to grow rapidly, it can make up for shortfalls in terms of ETF demand,” said Suki Cooper, analyst at Standard Chartered.

(Reporting by Ashitha Shivaprasad in Bengaluru; Editing by Veronica Brown and Jan Harvey)

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BERLIN (AP) — German prosecutors said they carried out raids Wednesday in an investigation of a suspected attempt to disrupt the country’s gas supply, connected to an opaque maneuver in 2022 involving what was Russian energy giant Gazprom’s German unit.

Federal prosecutors said police searched the premises in Berlin of a suspect and another person who isn’t under investigation, along with those of an unidentified company in Frankfurt. They said that there were no arrests.

The suspect, a Russian citizen whose name wasn’t released, is being investigated on suspicion of being an accessory to violating investment rules in Germany’s foreign trade law and an accessory to attempted anticonstitutional sabotage, prosecutors said in a statement.

A few weeks after Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, German officials said the parent company announced that it was withdrawing from the Gazprom Germania unit. They said the buyer ordered its liquidation, which isn’t allowed before a purchase has been approved.

Berlin put a German government agency in charge of Gazprom Germania, thwarting the attempted liquidation. The government said the unit was “of paramount significance” to natural gas trade, transport and storage in Germany. It later nationalized the company, now known as Securing Energy for Europe.

Federal prosecutors said they suspect the sale to a Moscow-based company with no link to the industry and the attempted liquidation were meant to disrupt gas supply in Germany, a backer of Ukraine. The man under investigation is suspected of having supported the implementation of the decision to liquidate Gazprom Germania with that aim, they said.

Germany scrambled to reduce its dependence on Russian gas after the invasion of Ukraine. Moscow cut off its remaining gas supplies to Germany months later.

A few weeks after that, undersea explosions damaged the Nord Stream pipelines, which were built to carry Russian natural gas to Germany under the Baltic Sea.

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WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance say their interim deal to end the war with Iran will deliver a financial windfall to American farmers.

But the Iranians deny it. And in the absence of more details, sanctions experts are flummoxed over exactly how billions of dollars’ worth of Iranian assets would make their way to the American heartland from the escrow accounts where they’ve been locked for years by U.S. sanctions.

A tentative agreement reached last week would reopen the Strait of Hormuz, through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas once passed, and allow Iran to start selling its oil freely again during a 60-day period when the two countries will continue negotiating key issues. The memorandum of understanding also promised to unfreeze Iranian assets.

Trump’s deal has come under fire for failing to address the reasons the president cited for going to war with Iran on Feb. 28, including curbing Tehran’s nuclear ambitions, its missile program and its support for militant groups such as Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza.

Lashing back at critics Tuesday on his Truth Social media platform, Trump said U.S. farmers would get a payday: The U.S. Treasury Department, he wrote, would release the Iranian assets “into escrow, controlled by the U.S.A., and will be used for the purchase of food and medical supplies, exclusively from the United States, including Corn, Wheat, and Soybeans from our great American farmers. These are things that are desperately needed by Iran.’’

Vance, who spoke about the proposal after high-level talks in Switzerland, and Trump say that any frozen funds and assets held outside of Iran will be used to buy U.S. crops.

But the Iranians deny that’s part of the deal. A spokesperson for the Iranian Foreign Ministry, Esmail Baghaei, said any agricultural purchases would be based on “prices and quality,’’ not terms dictated by Washington.

“It is interesting that the philosophy and goal of the war, which was the destruction of the Iranian civilization and the collapse of Iran, has become enriching American farmers,” Baghaei said.

Iran’s ambassador in Geneva, Ali Bahreini, rejected Vance’s contention that the U.S. and Qatar would dictate how Iran uses unfrozen funds. “Iran is the only country who decides what to do with those assets,” he told reporters.

A U.S. official dismissed the contradiction, asserting that Iranian leaders were speaking to their domestic audience. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the record.

Joseph Glauber, a research fellow emeritus at the International Food Policy Research Institute, said Iran was unlikely to abandon its other trade partners on food.

Iran’s major suppliers include Brazil, India, Turkey, the European Union, Canada, Australia and Argentina, he said. Trump’s demand to buy from the U.S. would “create some hard feelings with some of our competitors.”

Under previous sanctions, the U.S. has required that money foreign countries spend on imports from Iran — such as South Korean purchases of oil and Iraqi purchases of Iranian electricity — be locked in escrow accounts and typically released only if the Treasury approves and if the proceeds go toward “non-sanctionable’’ items such as food and medicine.

On Monday, the U.S. Treasury approved the sale of Iranian oil, petrochemicals and petroleum products through Aug. 21. It did not mention any escrow accounts.

Richard Goldberg of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who coordinated efforts to put diplomatic pressure on Iran in the first Trump administration, said in a post on X that he would welcome “a clarification that Iran is actually restricted to only buying U.S. agricultural products.”

Richard Nephew, senior research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, said it’s unclear what the new U.S.-Iran agreement actually means for releasing restricted Iranian assets.

Could the U.S. require that the assets be used to buy American farm products?

“Well, we can try!’’ Nephew, who helped design Iran sanctions in the Obama and Biden administrations, said by email. “All you really need to do is to tell a foreign bank that they can move the money but only to a U.S. bank to buy soybeans or whatever.”

Banks do not have to comply, he said. If they refuse, the U.S. could sanction them as well.

But it’s rare for the U.S. to conduct itself that way, he added, “in part because we don’t usually like to give the impression that we treat national security issues as a cash grab.”

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Associated Press writers Josh Boak and Michelle L. Price in Washington contributed to this report.

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