More stories

  • in

    Fed Minutes Show Options Are Open on Interest Rate Cuts

    Minutes from a Nov. 6-7 meeting showed that Federal Reserve policymakers favored lowering rates “gradually.”Minutes from the Federal Reserve’s November meeting offered little signal about whether officials would cut interest rates at their next gathering, though they suggested that policymakers did expect to continue to lower borrowing costs “gradually” over time.The account of the central bank’s Nov. 6-7 meeting, released on Tuesday, showed that Fed officials still planned to cut interest rates further. But with the job market holding up better than expected and the economy growing at a solid clip, they are in no rush to slash them rapidly.Fed officials thought it “would likely be appropriate to move gradually toward a more neutral stance of policy over time,” the minutes showed.At the moment, central bankers think that their policy rate — which is set to a range of 4.5 percent to 4.75 percent — is “restrictive,” which means it is high enough to weigh on growth.That’s by design. Policymakers lifted rates to high levels in 2022 and 2023 to make borrowing more expensive, hoping to cool the economy and wrestle rapid inflation under control. But over the past year, inflation has been slowing toward the Fed’s 2 percent goal, and the unemployment rate had begun to nudge higher.Given that, officials began to cut rates in September, then made a second rate cut in November. The goal was to ease off the economic brakes a little, allowing the economy to slow gently without risking a painful crash. When Fed officials last released economic forecasts, in September, policymakers expected to make one final quarter-point rate cut in 2024.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Mexican President Mulls Retaliatory Tariffs After Trump’s Threats

    Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, hit back on Tuesday morning at President-elect Trump’s vow to impose 25 percent tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Mexico, signaling that her country was prepared to respond with retaliatory tariffs of its own.Ms. Sheinbaum also said that raising tariffs would fail to curb illegal migration or the consumption of illicit drugs in the United States, an argument that Mr. Trump had made in his warning on tariffs.“The best path is dialogue,” Ms. Sheinbaum said at her daily news conference, calling for negotiations with the incoming Trump administration while laying out steps that Mexico has already taken to assuage some of Mr. Trump’s concerns.Ms. Sheinbaum, reading from a letter she is planning to send to Mr. Trump, noted that illegal crossings at the border between Mexico and the United States had plunged from December 2023 to November 2024, largely as a result of Mexico’s own efforts to stem migration flows within its own territory.“Migrant caravans no longer reach the border,” she added.Ms. Sheinbaum also called on U.S. authorities to do more to address the root causes of migration.“Allocating even a fraction of what the United States spends on warfare toward peace building and development would address the deeper drivers of migration,” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote in the letter.Ms. Sheinbaum also raised the specter of a broader tariff war that could inflict damage on the economies of both nations, pointing to multinational car manufacturers like General Motors, Stellantis and Ford Motor Co., which have operated in Mexico for decades.“Why endanger them with tariffs that would harm both nations?” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote. “Any tariffs imposed by one side would likely prompt retaliatory tariffs, leading to risks for joint enterprises.”Mexico is far more dependent on trade with the United States than vice versa, exporting about 80 percent of its goods to its northern neighbor.But numerous sectors in the United States, such as semiconductor and chemicals manufacturers, also rely on exporting to Mexico. Exports to Mexico accounted for nearly 16 percent of overall American exports in 2022.Ms. Sheinbaum also said that Mexico was already taking steps to combat the smuggling of fentanyl to the United States. But she argued that the core problem was demand for fentanyl within the United States, calling the crisis “fundamentally a public health and consumption issue within your society.”“It is widely known that the chemical precursors used to produce fentanyl and other synthetic drugs are illegally entering Canada, the United States, and Mexico from Asian countries,” Ms. Sheinbaum wrote. “This underscores the urgent need for international collaboration.” More

  • in

    Trump’s proposed tariff increases would boost inflation by nearly 1%, Goldman Sachs estimates

    On Monday, Trump said on social media site Truth Social that he would impose an additional 10% tariff on goods from China and a 25% levy for Canada and Mexico.
    The three countries in question account for 43% of U.S. goods imports, and the tariffs would result in slightly less than $300 billion in revenue annually, according to Goldman Sachs calculations.
    It remains to be seen whether the tariffs will actually be implemented at the levels Trump proposed or what exceptions might be made.

    President-elect Donald Trump speaks at the U.S.-Mexico border on August 22, 2024 south of Sierra Vista, Arizona. 
    Rebecca Noble | Getty Images News | Getty Images

    The latest tariff proposal from President-elect Donald Trump would likely put upward pressure on inflation in the United States, according to Goldman Sachs.
    On Monday, Trump said on social media site Truth Social that he would impose an additional 10% tariff on goods from China and a 25% duty for Canada and Mexico. Goldman’s chief economist, Jan Hatzius, said in a note that the proposed levies would result in a notable increase for consumer prices in the U.S..

    “Using our rule of thumb that every 1 [percentage point] increase in the effective tariff rate would raise core PCE prices by 0.1%, we estimate that the proposed tariff increases would boost core PCE prices by 0.9% if implemented,” Hatzius said.
    “PCE” refers to the personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the preferred inflation reading of the Federal Reserve.
    A tariff-linked increase in core PCE could scramble the calculations around Fed rate cuts. The October PCE reading is due out Wednesday, and it’s expected to show a year-over-year increase of 2.8% for the core, according to economists surveyed by Dow Jones. In other words, inflation is still above the Fed’s target of 2%, and the tariffs could widen that gap.
    Traders have been dialing back their expectations for Fed rate cuts in 2025, though it is unclear how much of that is due to election results versus a resilient U.S. economy. Fed Chair Jerome Powell has said the central bank will consider the impact of tariffs and other fiscal policy changes on the direction of inflation once the details become clear.
    To be sure, it remains to be seen whether the tariffs will actually be implemented at the levels Trump proposed — or what exceptions might be made. The president-elect suggested in his social media post that the tariffs were conditional on changes to immigration policy and drug enforcement, specifically fentanyl. Some of Trump’s advisors and supporters have characterized the tariffs he proposed during the campaign as a bargaining position rather than a set policy.

    Hatzius, for his part, said it seems more likely that Canada and Mexico would avoid across-the-board tariffs than China.
    The three countries in question account for 43% of U.S. goods imports, and the tariffs would result in slightly less than $300 billion in revenue annually, according to Goldman Sachs calculations.

    Don’t miss these insights from CNBC PRO More

  • in

    Biden Cuts Intel’s Chip Award

    The Silicon Valley company will receive less money from the CHIPS Act after winning a $3 billion military contract and changing some of its investment commitments.The Biden administration said Tuesday that it would award up to $7.86 billion in direct funding to Intel, with the U.S. chip giant set to receive at least $1 billion of that money before the end of the year.The money is a reduction from Intel’s preliminary award of $8.5 billion, which President Biden announced during a visit to the company’s Arizona plant in March. The Commerce Department said it had reduced Intel’s grant because the chip maker, the biggest recipient of money under the CHIPS Act, also received a $3 billion contract to make semiconductors domestically for the military.But the Commerce Department also detailed in a project document that Intel, which is under financial pressure because of a sales slump, had extended timelines for some projects beyond a 2030 government deadline.The company now plans to invest $90 billion in the United States by the end of the decade, after previously saying it would spend $100 billion over the next five years. It also reduced the estimated jobs it would create in Ohio, where it will require 3,500 fewer employees than the 10,000 it previously estimated, the Commerce Department said.Commerce and Intel officials said those changes weren’t a factor in the final award.Intel’s shifting timeline and jobs projections speak to the challenges the Biden administration has run into as it tries to rev up domestic chip-making. The CHIPS Act, a bipartisan bill passed in 2022, provided $39 billion to subsidize the construction of facilities to help the United States reduce its reliance on foreign production of the tiny, critical electronics that power everything from dishwashers to iPads.Nailing down its CHIPS award has been a priority for Intel, which last month reported the biggest quarterly loss in the company’s 56-year history. It has been cutting costs and fending off takeover interest from rivals, after the total value of the company fell to around $107 billion, from $500 billion in 2000. (Other chip makers have also been facing challenges, because of a cyclical slump in the industry.)We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Trump Plans Tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico That Could Cripple Trade

    President-elect Donald J. Trump said on Monday that he would impose tariffs on all products coming into the United States from Canada, Mexico and China on his first day in office, a move that would scramble global supply chains and impose heavy costs on companies that rely on doing business with some of the world’s largest economies.In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump mentioned a caravan of migrants making its way to the United States from Mexico, and said he would use an executive order to levy a 25 percent tariff on goods from Canada and Mexico until drugs and migrants stopped coming over the border.“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” the president-elect wrote.“Both Mexico and Canada have the absolute right and power to easily solve this long simmering problem,” he added. “We hereby demand that they use this power, and until such time that they do, it is time for them to pay a very big price!”In a separate post, Mr. Trump also threatened an additional 10 percent tariff on all products from China, saying that the country was shipping illegal drugs to the United States.“Representatives of China told me that they would institute their maximum penalty, that of death, for any drug dealers caught doing this but, unfortunately, they never followed through,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    Can Wall Street Billionaires Deliver on Trump’s Blue-Collar Promise?

    The president-elect has named wealthy financiers for key economic positions, raising questions about how much they will follow through on promises to help the working class.When Donald J. Trump first ran for the White House in 2016, his closing campaign advertisement lamented the influence of Wall Street in Washington, flashing ominous images of big banks and the billionaire liberal philanthropist George Soros.Now, as president-elect, Mr. Trump has tapped two denizens of Wall Street to run his economic agenda. Scott Bessent, who invested money for Mr. Soros for more than a decade, is his pick for Treasury secretary, and Howard Lutnick, the chief executive of Cantor Fitzgerald, will be nominated to lead the Commerce Department. Mr. Trump’s choices to lead his economic team show the prominence of billionaire investors in setting an agenda that is supposed to fuel a “blue-collar boom” but that skeptics think will mostly benefit the rich.As Mr. Trump prepares to assume the presidency in January, business owners and investors are closely attuned to which of his economic promises he will ultimately follow through on. He has promised to slash tax rates, impose hefty tariffs on China and other countries, and deport millions of immigrants who work in American farms and businesses.The selections of Mr. Bessent and Mr. Lutnick cement a hold by Wall Street executives over the two most important economic posts in any administration. The picks are drawing blowback from Democrats and left-leaning groups, who assailed Mr. Trump for giving top jobs to rich donors and suggested that they would soon be working to create new tax breaks for the rich, not those who are struggling.“For all his talk of looking out for working-class Americans, President-elect Trump’s choice of a billionaire hedge fund manager to lead the Treasury Department shows he just wants to keep a rigged system that only works for big corporations and the very wealthy,” said Tony Carrk, the executive director of the government watchdog group Accountable.US.Yet the decision to tap Mr. Bessent and Mr. Lutnick is raising speculation that Mr. Trump could take a more market-friendly approach to many of his economic policies than some had feared because of his professed love of tariffs, which had the potential for igniting a global trade war.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

  • in

    U.S. stock and bond markets love Trump’s pick of Bessent for Treasury — here’s why

    Markets looked favorably on President-elect Donald Trump’s presumptive nominee for Treasury secretary, with equity futures rising and Treasury yields falling.
    The move to put hedge fund magnate Scott Bessent in the position now held by Janet Yellen sent a message that Trump wants someone with strong market credentials as well as a similar philosophy for the role.
    “President Trump has some very good ideas, but I guarantee you, the last thing he wants is to cause inflation,” Bessent told CNBC earlier in November.

    Scott Bessent, founder and chief executive officer of Key Square Group LP, during an interview in Washington, D.C., June 7, 2024.
    Stefani Reynolds | Bloomberg | Getty Images

    The U.S. stock market appeared to cheer President-elect Donald Trump’s presumptive nominee for Treasury secretary, who told CNBC earlier in November that he sees an era of strong growth and lower inflation ahead.
    Stock market futures rose and Treasury yields tumbled early Monday following the announcement late Friday that Trump would pick Scott Bessent, a familiar Wall Street figure, to take on his administration’s most important economic role.

    The move sent a message that Trump wants someone with strong market credentials as well as a similar philosophy for the role.
    “This pick should please markets given Bessent’s in-depth understanding of financial markets and the economy – in particular the bond market the Trump administration will need to keep on [its] side if it is to advance its agenda successfully,” Sarah Bianchi, Evercore ISI’s chief strategist of international political affairs and public policy, and colleagues wrote in a note.
    Bianchi added that markets “couldn’t have done much better” than Bessent.
    Since Trump’s victory earlier this month, in which he also carried a red wave that flipped the Senate to Republicans and retained GOP control of the House, markets have been mostly positive, albeit volatile. In particular, bond yields have scaled higher, with some interpreting the move as anticipating another leg up for inflation while others see it as traders pricing in stronger growth.

    Stock chart icon

    10-year Treasury

    In a CNBC interview the day after Trump’s victory, and before the announcement that he would be nominated, Bessent said he expected the new president’s agenda to help bring down inflation while simultaneously stimulating growth.

    “The one thing he doesn’t want is a replay of what we’ve just got under Biden-Harris,” Bessent said.
    “President Trump has some very good ideas, but I guarantee you, the last thing he wants is to cause inflation,” he added. “I don’t think the bond market is worried about Trump 2.0 inflation. I think what you’re seeing is a healthy move geared toward a growth impetus.”

    Though some investors worry that the tariffs Trump has talked about implementing could cause inflation, Bessent said he favors that they be “layered in” so as not to cause anything more than short-term adjustments.
    “If you take that price adjustment coupled with all the other disinflationary things President Trump is talking about, we’re going to be at or below the 2% inflation target” that the Federal Reserve prefers, he said.

    Moving in threes

    Bessent favors a three-pronged approach that addresses worries over the ballooning national debt and deficits: growing the economy at a 3% rate, knocking down the budget deficit to 3% of gross domestic product — less than half where it stands now — and adding three million barrels a day in oil production.
    Wall Street commentary was almost universally positive.
    Perpetual market bull Tom Lee, head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors, noted that “Bessent lends substantial economic and market credibility to the incoming cabinet.”
    “In our view, this reinforces the market’s perception of a ‘Trump put’ — that is, the incoming White House wants equities to perform well,” Lee wrote.
    Early indications are that Bessent, who had a long history of supporting Democratic causes before backing Trump during his first run in 2016, should face little trouble getting confirmed.

    Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., signaled perhaps some trouble from the political left, saying in a statement over the weekend that Bessent’s “expertise is helping rich investors make more money, not cutting costs for families squeezed by corporate profiteering … I do not know if Mr. Bessent will transfer his loyalty from Wall Street investors to America’s workers, but I am willing to work with anyone to advance the interests of working families.”
    However, Washington policy expert Greg Valliere, chief U.S. policy strategist at AGF Investments, said Bessent should “sail to confirmation” and would join current Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Trump intends to nominate as secretary of State, “in the moderate wing of the Cabinet, with support in both parties.”
    Bessent “could play an important counterbalance to Commerce Secretary nominee, Howard Lutnick, as Trump pursues an aggressive trade agenda,” wrote Ed Mills, Washington policy analyst at Raymond James.
    “The more President Trump’s agenda can be achieved through economic growth versus significant budget cuts, we would expect the market to view that as a positive,” Mills said. More

  • in

    Can Saudi Arabia keep pace with its ambitious mega-project spending spree?

    The cost of Neom has been estimated to be as high as $1.5 trillion.
    This year, however, has seen a sharp change in direction in terms of spending for the kingdom.
    “Saudi Arabia has poured tens of billions into projects that have yet to hint of any financial returns,” one financier told CNBC.

    Digital render of NEOM’s The Line project in Saudi Arabia
    The Line, NEOM

    In Saudi Arabia’s northwestern desert, a sprawling construction site replete with cranes and pile drivers sits encircled by a recently-built road. A pair of tracks cuts through the site like deep gashes through the sand, comprising the spine of what planners say will be a high-speed rail system.
    The skeletal infrastructure forms the foundations of The Line, a multi-billion dollar high-tech city that its architects say will eventually house 9 million people between two 106-mile long glass skyscrapers more than 1,600 feet high.

    The project, whose estimated cost is in the hundreds of billions, is just one of the hyper-futuristic venues planned in Neom, the brainchild of Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and a region that the kingdom hopes will bring millions of new residents to Saudi Arabia and revolutionize living and technology in the country. It’s a core pillar of Vision 2030, which aims to diversify the Saudi economy away from oil revenues and create new jobs and industries for its burgeoning young population.
    The cost of Neom has been estimated to be as high as $1.5 trillion. In the years since it was announced, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, the mammoth sovereign wealth fund now overseeing $925 billion in assets, has poured billions into overseas investments, with ever-increasing waves of foreign investors flying to the kingdom to raise cash.
    This year, however, has seen a sharp change in direction in terms of spending, with a stated emphasis on keeping investments at home along with reports of cutting costs on megaprojects like those in Neom. The changes come as the Saudi deficit grows and the outlook for oil demand, along with global oil prices, sees sustained lows.

    Construction for The Line project in Saudi Arabia’s NEOM, October 2024
    Giles Pendleton, The Line at NEOM

    That begs the question: does Saudi Arabia have enough money to meet its lofty goals? Or will it have to be more flexible to make its spending trajectory sustainable?
    One Gulf-based financier with years of experience in the kingdom told CNBC: “The PIF’s pivot towards domestic investments, widely acknowledged but now officially admitted, suggests that there is still a lot of spending needed. Saudi Arabia has poured tens of billions into projects that have yet to hint of any financial returns.”

    The financier spoke anonymously as they were not authorized to speak to the press.
    Andrew Leber, a researcher at Tulane University who focuses on the political economy of the Middle East, believes that the current pace of spending won’t last.
    “The number of ‘we pay up front and hope for economic returns later’ giga projects that are currently underway is not sustainable,” Leber said.
    “With that being said,” he added, “the Saudi monarchy has shown itself to be somewhat flexible whenever economic realities assert themselves. I do think that eventually, a number of projects will be quietly shelved in order to bring its fiscal outlays back into greater sustainability.”

    Digital render of NEOM’s The Line project in Saudi Arabia
    The Line, NEOM

    Saudi Arabia in October cut its growth forecasts and raised its budget deficit estimates for the fiscal years 2024 to 2026 as it expects a period of higher spending and lower projected oil revenues. Real gross domestic product is now expected to grow 0.8% this year, a dramatic drop from a previous estimate of 4.4%, according to the ministry of finance.  
    The kingdom’s economy also swung dramatically from a budget surplus of $27.68 billion in 2022 to a deficit of $21.6 billion in 2023 as it ramped up public spending and decreased oil production due to its OPEC+ supply cut agreement. Its government forecasts a deficit of $21.1 billion for 2024, projecting revenue at $312.5 billion and expenditures at $333.5 billion.
    Saudi authorities expect that the budget will remain in deficit for the next several years as it pursues its Vision 2030 plans, but they add that they are fully prepared for this.

    “Our non-oil revenues have grown significantly, now it covers about 37% of expenditure. That’s a significant diversification, and that gives you a lot of comfort that you can maneuver and be stable despite the fluctuation in oil price,” Saudi Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan told CNBC in October. “Our aim is to make sure that our plans are stable and predictable.”
    “We are not going to blink, we have significant fiscal resource under our disposal, and we are very disciplined in our fiscal position,” the minister said.
    Saudi Arabia has an A/A-1 credit rating with a positive outlook from S&P Global Ratings and an A+ rating with a stable outlook from Fitch. That combined with high foreign currency reserves — $456.97 billion as of September, a 4% percent increase year-on-year, according to the country’s central bank — puts the kingdom in a comfortable place to manage a deficit, economists told CNBC.

    Riyadh is successfully issuing bonds, tapping debt markets for more than $35 billion so far this year. The kingdom has also rolled out a series of reforms to boost and de-risk foreign investment and diversify revenue streams, which S&P Global said in September “will continue to improve Saudi Arabia’s economic resilience and wealth.”
    When asked if the kingdom’s spending trajectory is sustainable, Al-Jadaan replied: “Absolutely, yes,” adding that the government recently published its numbers for the next three years and that “we think it is very sustainable.”
    Still, many analysts outside the kingdom, as well as individuals working within the kingdom and on NEOM projects, are skeptical of the megaprojects’ feasibility. Reports that some projects have been dramatically cut down — in the case of the Line, its size target slashed from 106 miles to 1.5 miles and population target down from 1.5 million by 2030 to less than 300,000 — attest to that concern on a higher level.

    Neom executives acknowledge that the current phase of work on The Line is for a building length of 1.5 miles — which would still make it the longest building in the world. However, the eventual goal of 106 miles has not changed, they say, stressing that cities are not built overnight and that construction is continuing apace.
    For Tarik Solomon, chairman emeritus at the American Chamber of Commerce in Saudi Arabia, “it’s promising to see transparency and some project cutbacks.”
    “The Kingdom’s rising external borrowing reflects challenges with Vision 2030 feasibility,” he told CNBC.
    “Though debt remains manageable at 26.5% of GDP, continued small pressures add up, underscoring the need for fiscal discipline and achievable goals.”
    Solomon pointed to the desire of many Saudi residents for improvements to the infrastructure they use in their daily lives — like Riyadh’s public transport, network connectivity, schools, and health care.
    “The road to resilience for Saudi Arabia isn’t in figuring out ski slopes in the desert but in building with innovation, complexity, and the courage to pursue what’s truly impactful,” he said. More