Economy

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday Mexico would retaliate if U.S. President-elect Donald Trump followed through with his proposed 25% across-the-board tariff, a move her government warned could kill 400,000 U.S. jobs and drive up prices for U.S. consumers.”If there are U.S. tariffs, Mexico would also raise tariffs,” Sheinbaum said during a press conference, in her clearest statement yet that the country was preparing possible retaliatory trade measures against its top trade partner.Mexican Economy Minister Marcelo Ebrard, speaking alongside Sheinbaum, called for more regional cooperation and integration instead of a war of retaliatory import taxes. “It’s a shot in the foot,” Ebrard said of Trump’s proposed tariffs, which appear to violate the USMCA trade deal between Mexico, Canada and the U.S.Ebrard warned the tariffs would lead to massive U.S. job losses, lower growth, and hit U.S. companies producing in Mexico by effectively doubling the taxes they paid. “The impact on companies is huge,” he said.The proposed tariffs would hit the automotive sector’s top cross-border exporters especially hard, Ebrard added, namely Ford (NYSE:F), General Motors (NYSE:GM) and Stellantis (NYSE:STLA).Ebrard noted that 88% of pickup trucks sold in the U.S. are made in Mexico and would see a price increase. These vehicles are popular in rural areas that overwhelmingly voted for Trump.“Our estimate is that the average price of these vehicles will increase by $3,000,” Ebrard said. Sheinbaum and Trump spoke by phone later on Wednesday, the Mexican president said on social media platform X, adding the two discussed “strengthening collaboration on security issues” and that the conversation was “excellent.”In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump said Sheinbaum “agreed to stop migration through Mexico, and into the United States, effectively closing our Southern Border.” He described the conversation as “very productive”. Sheinbaum’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters. Trump has previously said the tariffs would remain in effect until the flow of drugs – particularly fentanyl – and migrants into the U.S. was controlled. Sheinbaum added migrant caravans are no longer arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border “because they are attended to” in Mexico.A caravan of several thousand migrants had been heading through southern Mexico but numbers have dwindled in recent days.Many analysts regard Trump’s tariff threats as more of a negotiating tactic than trade policy.”The lack of a clear link between this threat and questions related to trade suggests the new president plans to use tariffs as a negotiating strategy to achieve goals largely unrelated to trade,” said David Kohl, chief economist at Julius Baer (SIX:BAER).PROFIT WIPED OUTMexico’s automotive industry is the country’s most important manufacturing sector, exporting predominantly to the United States. It represents nearly 25% of all North American vehicle production.Analysts at Barclays (LON:BARC) said they estimate the proposed tariffs “could wipe out effectively all profits” from the Detroit Three automakers.”While it’s generally understood that a blanket 25% tariff on any vehicles or content from Mexico or Canada could be disruptive, investors under-appreciate how disruptive this could be,” they wrote in a note on Tuesday.Brian Hughes, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team, said the tariffs would protect U.S. manufacturers and workers from “unfair practices of foreign companies and foreign markets.”Hughes said Trump would implement policies to make life affordable and more prosperous for his country.GM and Stellantis declined to comment. Ford did not comment on how the threatened tariffs would affect its business but said it manufactures more vehicles in the United States than most major automakers.Mexico’s automotive industry group AMIA said it would prepare for any possibility and wait to see what formal actions are taken. The Institute of International Finance, a trade group for the global financial services industry, warned Mexico-U.S. relations would be challenging going forward.”The imposition of tariffs, eventually leading to increased protectionism, and other policies affecting exchange rates and commodity prices could have significant implications for the region,” it said in a note. The USMCA is up for review in 2026.  Katia Goya, director of international economics at Grupo Financiero Banorte (BMV:GFNORTEO), said it was likely the three USMCA countries would seek wholesale renegotiation of the pact rather than just rubber-stamp it to continue in its current form.”The effect of a trade-conflict situation is that it will mean lower economic growth in the United States, higher unemployment and higher inflation,” Goya said.Ebrard said USMCA trade amounted to $1.78 trillion in the first nine months of this year.”We can fragment and divide with tariffs,” Ebrard said. “Mexico does not want conflicts and divisions, but to build a stronger region.” More

LONDON (Reuters) – Buying a new home in Britain became a little more affordable this year as average wages rose faster than house prices and mortgage costs, the country’s largest mortgage lender said on Thursday.Halifax, part of Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY), said the average house in the third quarter of 2024 cost 6.55 times the mean annual full-time income, down from 6.62 in 2023 and a record high of 7.24 in mid-2022.The cost of servicing a new mortgage dropped to its lowest in just over two years at 29% of average income, down from 33% a year ago, based on a mortgage with a 30-year term, a five-year fixed interest rate and a 25% deposit.”While homes are becoming more affordable, the progress has been gradual,” Halifax’s head of mortgages, Amanda Bryden, said.”Buying a property remains a significant challenge for many, with prices still near record highs and interest rates likely to stay higher than we’ve been used to over the past decade,” Bryden said. The Bank of England raised interest rates to a 15-year high of 5.25% in August 2023 and started to cut them in August this year followed by a further reduction to 4.75% this month.Economists polled by Reuters last week expected the BoE to cut rates to 3.75% by the end of next year, while they predicted house prices would rise by 3.1% next year and 4% in 2026.Halifax said the average house price in the third quarter of 2024 was 292,508 pounds ($368,823), barely changed on two years ago, although prices vary widely across the United Kingdom (TADAWUL:4280) even after taking regional wage differences into account.Housing was least affordable in southeast England and in London – where new mortgages cost 39% and 36% of local salaries – and cheapest in northeast England at 19% and Scotland and Northern Ireland at 22% of local full-time earnings.($1 = 0.7931 pounds) More

The FTC would be looking into its software licensing, cloud computing businesses, and practices related to cybersecurity and artificial intelligence products, the source added. Here are some key cases against Big Tech:MICROSOFT The FTC’s antitrust probe was approved by Chair Lina Khan ahead of her likely departure in January and the expectation that incoming President Donald Trump would appoint a fellow Republican with a softer approach toward business.The antitrust investigation into Microsoft would also look into allegations that the software giant is potentially abusing its market power in productivity software by imposing punitive licensing terms to prevent customers from moving their data from its Azure cloud service to other competitive platforms, sources confirmed earlier this month.ALPHABET In Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL)’s Google search case – where a federal judge ruled that the company broke the law with an illegal monopoly on online search – prosecutors argue that it should sell its Chrome browser, share data and search results and possibly even sell Android. In December, Google will have a chance to propose its own remedies, after which U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta will hold a two-week trial on what remedies are appropriate in the case.Separately, Google was in February hit with a 2.1 billion euro ($2.22 billion) lawsuit by 32 media groups, including Axel Springer and Schibsted, alleging that they had suffered losses due to the company’s practices in digital advertising. In the same month, Google asked a U.S. judge to throw out a jury verdict in a lawsuit by “Fortnite” maker Epic Games that found the technology giant had abused its market dominance in setting rules for its app store. Epic Games had prevailed in the high-profile antitrust trial that if it holds could upend the entire app store economy.APPLEIn March, the U.S. Department of Justice and 16 states sued Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) alleging the iPhone maker monopolized the smartphone market, hurt smaller rivals, and drove up prices. The DOJ has been probing Apple since 2019.The California-based firm is also under regulatory scrutiny in Europe. It is set to be fined by the European Union’s antitrust regulators for breaching the bloc’s tech rules, Reuters reported earlier this month.The European Commission in June determined that App Store’s rules breach the Digital Markets Act – new rules for Big Tech firms. Earlier this year, Apple was hit with a 1.84 billion euro fine for thwarting competition from music streaming rivals through restrictions on its App Store. Apple is appealing the penalty.Other lawsuits include a class action filed in March in San Jose, California federal court accusing the company of monopolizing the market for cloud storage in its mobile devices.META PLATFORMSMeta must restrict the use of personal data harvested from Facebook (NASDAQ:META) for targeted advertising, Europe’s Court of Justice of the European Union court ruled in October. This came after privacy activist Max Schrems took his grievance to an Austrian court and said he had been targeted by advertisements as a result of Meta’s personalized advertising based on processing personal data.Earlier in June, the European Commission notified the company that its “pay or consent” advertising model, already the target of privacy regulators and activists’ ire, was in breach of the DMA.An appeals court ruled in March that Meta cannot stop the U.S. Federal Trade Commission from reopening a probe into its Facebook unit’s privacy practices for now. The company had objected, citing the $5 billion fine it paid and the range of safeguards it had agreed.In October last year, dozens of U.S. states sued Meta and its Instagram unit, accusing them of fueling a youth mental health crisis by making their social media platforms addictive.The company was hit with a record 1.2 billion euro fine by its lead European Union privacy regulator in May 2023 over its handling of user information and given five months to stop transferring users’ data to the U.S.AMAZON.COMThe FTC filed a long-awaited antitrust lawsuit against Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) in September, charging the company with harming consumers with higher prices.While some of the states that sued alongside the FTC had their claims dismissed, the case was to still go forward to pursue any claims the judge did not permanently dismiss, as of October.The FTC has also filed other lawsuits against the company, including one accusing the e-commerce giant of duping “millions of consumers” into purchasing subscriptions for Prime services. ($1 = 0.9469 euros) More

The downturn was sharpest in consumer services – where large employers will bear the brunt of a 25 billion pound ($32 billion) rise in payroll taxes – but the mood at business and professional services companies soured too, the CBI said.On Monday Reeves told the CBI’s annual conference that she would not raise taxes in the same way again, after the CBI’s chief executive said businesses had been caught off guard by the scale of the tax rises.Thursday’s survey showed that optimism among consumer services businesses sank to its lowest since August 2022 at -55 in November, down from -19 in August, while among business and professional services sentiment fell to -29 from +9.The index represents the difference between the percentages of businesses which say they are more optimistic and those who are more pessimistic.”Falling sentiment, weaker hiring intentions and firming cost pressures are all at least a partial response to the forthcoming rise in employer National Insurance Contributions,” CBI Deputy Chief Economist Alpesh Paleja said.Business and professional services firms said their profitability had fallen by the most since August 2020 and all types of services firm said they would invest less.British business investment is low by international standards and this is widely seen as one cause of Britain’s lower economic productivity than its major peers.The gloom in the CBI survey has also been reflected in other surveys. Last week the S&P Global purchasing managers’ index pointed to economic contraction for the first time in 13 months.The CBI survey was based on responses from 441 firms collected between Oct. 29 and Nov. 14.($1 = 0.7898 pounds) More

The response came after some users pointed out on social media that the company requires users to opt-out of its “connected experiences” feature, which they argued was used to train AI models.”These claims are untrue. Microsoft does not use customer data from Microsoft 365 consumer and commercial applications to train foundational large language models,” a Microsoft spokesperson said in an emailed statement to Reuters. The spokesperson added that the “connected experiences” enables features such as co-authoring and cloud storage, and has no connection to how the company trains its large language models.The conversations on social media indicate that people remain concerned about their data being used to train AI models without permission. More

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The personal consumption expenditures price index increased 0.2% on the month and showed a 12-month inflation rate of 2.3%, both in line with expectations.
Core inflation showed even stronger readings, with an increase at 0.3% on a monthly basis and an annual reading of 2.8%, also as forecast.
Spending rose 0.4% on the month, as forecast, while personal income jumped 0.6%, well above the 0.3% estimate.

Inflation edged higher in October as the Federal Reserve is looking for clues on how much it should lower interest rates, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday.
The personal consumption expenditures price index, a broad measure the Fed prefers as its inflation gauge, increased 0.2% on the month and showed a 12-month inflation rate of 2.3%. Both were in line with the Dow Jones consensus forecast, though the annual rate was higher than the 2.1% level in September.

Excluding food and energy, core inflation showed even stronger readings, with the increase at 0.3% on a monthly basis and an annual reading of 2.8%. Both also met expectations. The annual rate was 0.1 percentage point above the prior month.
Services prices generated most of the inflation for the month, rising 0.4%, while goods fell 0.1%. Food prices were little changed, while energy was off 0.1%.
Fed policymakers target inflation at a 2% annual rate. PCE inflation has been above that level since March 2021 and peaked around 7.2% in June 2022, prompting the Fed to go an on aggressive rate-hiking campaign.
Stocks were mixed following the release, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average up about 100 points, though the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were both negative. Treasury yields fell.
Despite the rise in headline inflation, traders increased their bets that the Fed would approve another rate cut in December. Odds of a quarter-percentage-point reduction in the central bank’s key borrowing rate were at 66% Wednesday morning, according to the CME Group’s FedWatch measure.

While the inflation rate has dropped significantly since the Fed started tightening, it remains a nettlesome problem for households and figured prominently into the presidential race. Despite its deceleration over the past two years, the cumulative effects of inflation have hit consumers hard, particularly on the lower end of the wage scale.
Consumer spending was still solid in October, though it tailed off a bit from September. Current-dollar expenditures rose 0.4% on the month, as forecast, while personal income jumped 0.6%, well above the 0.3% estimate, the report showed.
The personal saving rate slipped to 4.4%, tied for its lowest since January 2023.
On the inflation side, housing-related costs have continued to boost the numbers, despite expectations that the pace would cool as rents eased. Housing prices rose 0.4% in October.
The Fed follows a broad dashboard of indicators to gauge inflation but uses the PCE figure specifically for its forecasting and as its main policy tool. The data is considered broader than the Labor Department’s consumer price index and adjusts for behavior in consumer spending such as replacing more expensive items for less costly ones.
Officials tend to consider core inflation as a better long-term gauge but use both numbers in considering policy moves.
The release follows consecutive rate cuts by the Fed in September and November totaling three quarters of a percentage point. Though the November reduction happened after the month the report covers, markets had been widely anticipating the move.
Fed officials at their November meeting indicated confidence that inflation was moving toward the 2% target, though members advocated a gradual reduction in interest rates as they acknowledged uncertainty over how much cuts will be needed.

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