Workers have seen their slice of the global income pie shrink significantly over the past two decades, swelling inequality and depriving the combined labor force of trillions, the U.N. said Wednesday.

The United Nations' International Labor Organization said that the global labor income share -- or the proportion of total income in an economy earned by working -- had fallen by 1.6 percentage points since 2004.

The U.S. trade deficit in July expanded to its largest since mid-2022, according to government data released Wednesday, as imports rose more quickly than exports.

World stocks tumbled Wednesday after Wall Street had its worst day since early August, with heavyweight Nvidia falling 9.5%, leading to a global decline in chip-related stocks.

France's CAC 40 slipped 0.8% in early trading to 7,513.31, and Germany's DAX lost 0.8% to 18,607.62. Britain's FTSE 100 also dropped 0.8% to 8,230.49. The futures for the S&P 500 were down 0.4% and those for the Dow Jones Industrial Average shed 0.2%.

Donald Trump is betting that Americans crave trillions of dollars in tax cuts — and that growth will be so fantastic that it's not worth worrying about budget deficits.

In short, he's hoping that most economic analyses of his ideas are dead wrong.

Serbia is a Russian ally and will never impose sanctions against Moscow or join NATO, the Balkan nation's deputy prime minister said Wednesday as he met with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The remarks by Aleksandar Vulin, a former intelligence chief who is under U.S. sanctions, reflect persistent close relations between Belgrade and Moscow despite Serbia's proclaimed bid to join the European Union.

Salvagers abandoned an initial effort to tow away a burning oil tanker in the Red Sea targeted by Yemen's Houthi rebels as it "was not safe to proceed," a European Union naval mission said, leaving the Sounion stranded and its 1 million barrels of oil at risk of spilling.

While a major spill has yet to occur, the incident threatens to become one of the worst yet in the Iranian-backed rebels' campaign that has disrupted the $1 trillion in goods that pass through the Red Sea each year over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. It also has halted some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.

Germany's Volkswagen says auto industry headwinds mean it can't rule out plant closings in its home country - and must drop a longstanding job protection pledge in force since 1994 that would have barred layoffs through 2029.

"The European automotive industry is in a very demanding and serious situation," Oliver Blume, Volkswagen Group CEO, said in a statement Monday.

When Jerome Powell delivered a high-profile speech last month, the Federal Reserve chair came the closest he ever had to declaring that the inflation surge that gripped the nation for three painful years was now essentially defeated.

And not only that. The Fed's high interest rates, Powell said, had managed to achieve that goal without causing a widely predicted recession and high unemployment.

Wall Street was poised to open with losses Tuesday, kicking off a holiday-shortened week that features another hefty slate of earnings and the government's latest jobs report.

Futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average were each down 0.5% before the bell.

Lebanon's controversial former central bank governor Riad Salameh was detained Tuesday after being questioned in several corruption cases, according to three judicial officials.

Salameh served a 30-year term as central bank governor beginning in 1993.