American News
Trump is no longer controlled by the stock markets
On the day of the US presidential inauguration I was told by a top US tech chief executive that although he was likely to be hit by retaliatory tariffs, he assumed any trade war would die down.
“Trump lives by the Dow Jones’ reaction,” he said – something markets call the “Trump put”.
This means that whenever a White House announcement that damaged sentiment came out, the president would row back after seeing a stock market fall.
Those assumptions have now changed, after the president gave a TV interview in which he downplayed how much he was moved by markets.
And only a day after US stock markets fell sharply on worries over the impact of Trump’s policies, the president has decided to double tariffs against Canada on steel and aluminium, in response to higher charges for Canadian electricity, worth about $100 per bill, in New York, Minnesota and Michigan.
On Monday, Ontario premier Doug Ford announced a 25% surcharge on US-bound electricity and threatened to “shut off” supply completely.
President Trump has said he is rebuilding wealth based on decades or even a century into the future, and this cannot be measured in the quarterly results of America’s stock market giants.
Alongside comments from his Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, the White House was communicating to markets that the president now has some tolerance for short-term market and economic pain. This has changed the calculus.
There are another two factors at play here. There is evidence of actual potential reversal in the US economic sentiment, raising questions about a recession.
The very latest real-time analysis by the Atlanta branch of the US Federal Reserve predicts a falling US economy in the first three months of the year.
Government cuts could also contribute to such a reading, but private sector sentiment has taken a hit too, especially by the hokey cokey over tariffs.
Above all, the uncertainty threatens to be crippling. The policies change by the day, and even then can get retrospectively paused.
Key US government departments are not entirely clear on the direction of travel in the White House.
On top of all of this, in the case of Canada, a likely election suggests little incentive to compromise.
Indeed, what is there to compromise with when Trump says he wants to use economic leverage to make his northern neighbour his “51st State”?
The direction of travel here is for the trade war to escalate in intensity and scope.
New trade barriers on the European Union may emerge in three weeks’ time based on “reciprocity”.
As other nations see signs of inflation re-emerging in the US, they will be more likely to try to add to it, to bring home to US consumers the consequences of the decisions of their government.
In the past fortnight the world has learnt that President Trump is serious about tariffs, even on his allies. They have been applied in a huge way.
Key trade partners have reciprocated in kind and have an incentive to up the ante. And the White House now wants to communicate it has a high pain threshold for short-term economic and market disruption.
All roads lead to 2 April and the announcement on “reciprocal tariffs”, and for now these tensions do not appear to be heading for a truce, ceasefire or pause.
Taken From BBC News
American News
President Donald Trump is asking the US Supreme Court to review the $5m (£3.6m) civil case that found he defamed and sexually abused writer E Jean Carroll.
He has repeatedly claimed that the judge who oversaw the civil trial, Lewis Kaplan, improperly allowed evidence to be presented that hurt how the jury viewed Trump.
A federal appeals court agreed with the jury’s verdict last year and said Kaplan did not make errors that would warrant a new trial.
A New York jury awarded Ms Carroll damages over her civil claim that Trump sexually assaulted her in the 1990s, and then branded the incident a hoax on social media. He denied the allegations.
The Supreme Court is now Trump’s last hope of overturning the unanimous jury’s verdict. Whether the top US court will take the case up is unclear.
A federal appeals court declined to rehear Trump’s challenge to it in June.
Trump’s comments about the jury’s findings in the case led a separate jury to order him to pay Ms Carroll $83m for defaming her. A panel of federal judges denied his appeal of that decision in September, and Trump has now taken the next step in trying to have it overturned by asking the full bench of judges at a federal appeals court to review the case.
In the petition to the Supreme Court, Trump’s lawyers argued Kaplan should not have let jurors see the 2005 Access Hollywood tape that showed the president saying he groped and kissed women.
“There were no eyewitnesses, no video evidence, and no police report or investigation,” they wrote about Ms Carroll’s allegations.
“Instead, Carroll waited more than 20 years to falsely accuse Donald Trump, who she politically opposes, until after he became the 45th president, when she could maximize political injury to him and profit for herself.”
Roberta Kaplan, Ms Carroll’s attorney, told the BBC she had no comment on the Supreme Court appeal.
While Trump was found to have defamed and sexually abused Ms Carroll, the jury rejected her claim of rape as defined in New York’s penal code.
Ms Carroll, a former magazine columnist who is now 81, sued Trump for attacking her in the mid-1990s in a department store dressing room in Manhattan. The defamation stemmed from Trump’s post on his Truth Social platform in 2022 denying her claim.
Trump has said Ms Carroll was “not my type” and that she lied.
American News
Four potential obstacles in House vote to end US shutdown
A day after the US Senate passed a spending bill to end the longest-ever government shutdown, the budget fight now moves to the House of Representatives.
The lower chamber of Congress is expected to vote this week on the funding measure.
Unlike in the Senate, if House Republicans stay united, they don’t need any Democrats to pass the budget. But the margin for error is razor thin.
Here are four potential hold-ups for the budget, before it can clear Congress and land on the president’s desk for signing into law.
Will House Republicans budge on healthcare?
A key sticking point throughout the shutdown has been a desire on the part of Democrats to attach to the spending bill a renewal of tax credits that make health insurance less expensive for 24 million Americans.
Senate Republicans instead only agreed to grant Democrats a vote in December on whether to extend the subsidies – something they had already offered weeks ago.
And House Speaker Mike Johnson would not commit on Monday to allowing a vote in his chamber on the tax credits.
This entails a fair degree of political risk for Republicans, however. If they torpedo the subsidies, health coverage premiums could rocket, handing Democrats a ready-made campaign issue for next year’s midterm elections.
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a conservative Republican congresswoman from Georgia, has broken ranks with President Donald Trump to warn that her party must ensure health insurance premiums do not spike.
As the clock ticks down to the subsidies expiring by the end of December, Republicans are working out their plan.
They want income caps on who can receive the tax credits, and are proposing the tax dollars bypass insurance companies and go straight to individuals – although the details are unclear.
How intense will House Democratic opposition be?
Out of power in Washington, where Trump’s Republicans control the House and Senate, Democrats appeared finally to have some political wind in their sails after a handful of election wins last week in Virginia, New Jersey and New York City.
But those victories, like the shutdown fight, have accentuated strategic tensions between the pragmatic and progressive, or left-wing, factions of the party.
The Democratic left is furious at defectors who voted with Senate Republicans to pass the budget on Monday, seeing this as a capitulation to Trump.
From that wing of the party, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont said giving up the fight was a “horrific mistake”. California Governor Gavin Newsom called it “surrender”.
Congressman Greg Casar of Texas, the chairman of the House Progressive Caucus, warned: “A deal that doesn’t reduce healthcare costs is a betrayal of millions of Americans counting on Democrats to fight for them.”
However, centrist lawmakers like Jared Golden of Maine, who represents one of the most conservative districts in the nation held by any Democrat, may cross the aisle.
Golden, who recently announced he won’t run for re-election, is likely to vote for the package, his office indicated to Axios, a political outlet, on Monday.
Another moderate Democrat, Henry Cuellar of Texas, could help get the Republicans’ spending plan over the line.
“It’s past time to put country over party and get our government working again for the American people,” he posted on social media on Sunday.
American News
Fight fake news and defeat climate deniers, Brazil’s Lula tells UN talks
The world must “defeat” climate denialism and fight fake news, Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has told the opening meeting of the UN climate talks.
In a rallying cry to COP30, President Lula again made thinly-veiled references to President Donald Trump who branded climate change “a con job” in September.
The two weeks of talks kicked off on Monday in the lush Brazilian city of Belém on the edge of the Amazon rainforest.
They take place against a fraught political backdrop and the US has sent no senior officials.
On Monday thousands of delegates poured into the COP venue in a heavily air-conditioned former aerodrome, some coming from accommodation in shipping containers and cruise ships moored on the riverside.
Members of the Guajajara indigenous group, in traditional dress, performed a welcome song and dance for assembled diplomats.
Addressing the conference, President Lula said “COP30 will be the COP of truth” in an era of “fake news and misrepresentation” and “rejection of scientific evidence”.
Without naming President Trump, President Lula continued, “they control the algorithms, sew hatred and spread fear”.
“It’s time to inflict a new defeat on the deniers,” he said.
Since President Trump took office in January, he has promised to invest heavily in fossil fuels, saying that this will secure greater economic prosperity for the US.
His administration has cancelled more than $13bn of funding for renewable energy and is taking steps to open up more areas of the US to oil and gas exploration.
That puts the country at odds with the majority of nations still committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and investing in green energy.
This backdrop has put the COP talks in a difficult position as nations aim to make progress on tackling climate change without the participation of the world’s biggest economy.
Some delegates fear that the US could still decide to send officials to undermine the talks. Other environmental talks collapsed this year following US pressure, labelled “bully-boy tactics” by some participants.
Addressing officials in Belém, UN climate chief Simon Stiell initially struck an optimistic tone. He said significant progress had been made in the last decade to reduce emissions of planet-warming gases.
But then he took aim at “squabbling” between countries.
“Not one single nation among you can afford this, as climate disasters rip double-digits off GDP,” he said.
Brazil wants to use its presidency of the talks to secure progress on key promises made in previous years.
That includes moving away from the use of planet-warming fossil fuels, finance for developing countries on the frontline of climate change, and protecting nature.
President Lula’s centrepiece is a fund called the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) that Brazil hopes will raise $125bn to protect tropical forests globally.
But fund-raising got off to a slow start, particularly after the UK decided at the last minute not to contribute public money.
Nations are yet to agree on the conference agenda.
Countries with competing interests are lobbying for new items to be added, including a plea from a coalition called Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS) that includes Caribbean and Pacific countries at most risk from rising seas and rising global temperatures
The group called for the COP to discuss the long-held goal of keeping global temperature rise to 1.5C.
But in recent weeks even the UN has said it accepts that overshooting this temperature is “inevitable”.
Last week UN General Secretary General António Guterres told leaders in Belém that the failure to limit global temperature rise to 1.5C was a “moral failure and deadly negligence”.
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