Finance

President-elect Donald Trump plans to raise tariffs by an additional 10% on all Chinese goods coming into the U.S., according to a post Monday on his social media platform Truth Social.
The post immediately followed one in which Trump said his first of “many” executive orders on Jan. 20 would impose tariffs of 25% on all products from Mexico and Canada.

Chinese and U.S. flags flutter near The Bund, before U.S. trade delegation meet their Chinese counterparts for talks in Shanghai, China July 30, 2019.
Aly Song | Reuters

BEIJING — President-elect Donald Trump plans to raise tariffs by an additional 10% on all Chinese goods coming into the U.S., according to a post Monday on his social media platform Truth Social.
The post immediately followed one in which Trump said his first of “many” executive orders on Jan. 20 would impose tariffs of 25% on all products from Mexico and Canada.

Trump is set to be inaugurated as the next U.S. president on Jan. 20.
This is a breaking news story. Please check back for updates. More

Warren Buffett
David A. Grogan | CNBC

Warren Buffett, who has amassed a $150 billion personal fortune, made a case against creating “dynastic” wealth as he named three independent trustees to oversee his philanthropy following his children and donated an additional $1.1 billion in Berkshire Hathaway stock to his family’s four foundations.
Instead of leaving his three children an enormous inheritance, the 94-year-old legendary investor has long pledged to give away 99% of the fortune he built at Berkshire, the Omaha, Nebraska-based conglomerate he has been running since 1965. 

Buffett believes family wealth dynasties could have negative consequences such as eroding personal growth and complicating relationships. Meanwhile, they also create societal uncertainties as it’s unforeseeable how future generations choose to distribute such wealth.
“I’ve never wished to create a dynasty or pursue any plan that extended beyond the children,” Buffett wrote in a lengthy letter Monday. “I know the three well and trust them completely. Future generations are another matter. Who can foresee the priorities, intelligence and fidelity of successive generations to deal with the distribution of extraordinary wealth amid what may be a far different philanthropic landscape?”
Successor trustees named
The “Oracle of Omaha,” who owns about 37.6% of Berkshire Class A shares, said the assets he’s collected may take longer to deploy than his children live. He has appointed three trustees of his charitable trust to potentially succeed his children in disbursing his wealth. Buffett’s children are now 71, 69 and 66.
“Three potential successor trustees have been designated. Each is well known to my children and makes sense to all of us. They are also somewhat younger than my children,” Buffett wrote. “But these successors are on the wait list. I hope Susie, Howie and Peter themselves disburse all of my assets.”
The identity of the trustees was not revealed.

Buffett has been making annual donations to the four family foundations since 2006. He said he’s built strong trust in his children’s managerial ability and philanthropic ambition through years of observation.
“The 2006-2024 period gave me the chance to observe each of my children in action and they have learned much about large-scale philanthropy and human behavior,” he said. “They enjoy being comfortable financially, but they are not preoccupied with wealth. Their mother, from whom they learned these values, would be very proud of them. As am I.”
On Monday, Buffett converted 1,600 A shares into 2,400,000 B shares to donate to the four family foundations: 1,500,000 shares to The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation and 300,000 shares to each of The Sherwood Foundation, The Howard G. Buffett Foundation and NoVo Foundation.
Buffett’s Berkshire, which pierced a $1 trillion market cap this year, owns a vast array of well-established businesses, ranging from its crown jewel Geico insurance to BNSF Railway to consumer brands like Dairy Queen and See’s Candies.

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UniCredit on Monday offered to snap up its domestic rival Banco BPM for roughly 10 billion euros ($10.5 billion).
The deal would, if completed, merge two of Italy’s largest lenders.
It follows a flurry of banking M&A news in Europe. In September, UniCredit increased its stake in Commerzbank to around 21% and submitted a request to boost the holding to up to 29.9%.

A logo on the UniCredit SpA headquarters in Milan, Italy, on Saturday Jan. 22, 2022.
Bloomberg | Getty Images

Italian lender UniCredit on Monday offered to snap up its domestic rival Banco BPM for roughly 10 billion euros ($10.5 billion) in a move it says is separate from its pursuit of German bank Commerzbank.
The deal would, if completed, merge two of Italy’s largest lenders. UniCredit said in a statement early Monday that it is offering 6.657 euros for each share — a slight premium on Friday’s close price of 6.644 euros.

UniCredit said the purchase, which would be an all-stock deal, would allow the bank to “further strengthen its role as a leading pan-European banking group.”
Shares of UniCredit were down 1.7% on Monday in early deals, while Banco BPM soared 5%.
The news follows a flurry of merger and acquisition announcements in the European banking sector this year. The industry has been considered ripe for consolidation for years, with cash-rich UniCredit often cited as a possible acquirer.

In September, UniCredit increased its stake in German lender Commerzbank to around 21% and submitted a request to boost the holding to up to 29.9%. Earlier that month, the Italian bank had taken a 9% stake in Commerzbank, with half of this shareholding acquired from the German government.
The German government has yet to bless the potential union, with Chancellor Olaf Scholz stating that “unfriendly attacks, hostile takeovers are not a good thing for banks,” in late-September comments carried by Reuters.

The largest shareholder of Commerzbank, the Berlin administration, retains a 12% stake after rescuing the lender during the 2008 financial crisis and divesting 4.5% of its initial position in early September. Commerzbank shares slipped 6% on Monday.
“It’s definitely a surprise,” Kian Abouhossein, head of European bank equity research and global IB coverage at JP Morgan, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
“It’s unlikely that he [UniCredit CEO Andrea Orcel] can do both transactions at the same time. So that sends a message that maybe Commerzbank is a bit more difficult than originally expected.”

Earlier this month, meanwhile, Banco BPM itself made a bid for asset manager Anima in a possible 1.6-billion-euro deal, and just days later bought a 5% chunk of state-owned Monte dei Paschi di Siena (MPS).
UniCredit on Nov. 6 posted an 8% year-on-year hike in quarterly net profit to 2.5 billion euros ($2.25 billion), compared with a Reuters-reported 2.27-billion-euro forecast. It also raised its full-year net profit guidance to above 9 billion euros, from a previous outlook of 8.5 billion euros. Shares are up some 55% so far this year.
Abouhossein said that even if the Commerzbank and Banco BPM deals were staggered by, for example, nine months, this would still be an unrealistic timeframe for the transactions.
“You have to also remember, from a regulatory perspective, there’s a lot of execution risk and the regulator will look at the size of the bank, operational risk, and management’s ability to integrate two banks at the same time,” he said. “So I think he’s [Orcel] hedging himself a bit on these transactions.”
—CNBC’s April Roach and Ruxandra Iordache contributed to this article.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Banco BPM. More

America’s gross national debt is $36trn, or $107,000 per person. It is rising fast and will probably soon be rising even faster. If Donald Trump’s election campaign was anything to go by, his return to the White House heralds a flurry of tax cuts on everything from corporate profits to tips. In the fiscal year that ended in September, Uncle Sam spent $1.8trn more than he collected in taxes (6.4% of GDP, or over double the annual earnings of America’s seven biggest firms). By one estimate, Mr Trump’s agenda could raise borrowing by $4.1trn in the coming decade. More

The bitcoin rally is generating a false sense of security among investors, according to the strategist behind the so-called granddaddy of gold exchange-traded funds.
State Street Global Advisors’ George Milling-Stanley warns cryptocurrency plays don’t offer the stability of gold.

“Bitcoin, pure and simple, it’s a return play, and I think that people have been jumping onto the return plays,” the firm’s chief gold strategist said on CNBC’s “ETF Edge” this week.
Milling-Stanley’s comments came as his firm’s SPDR Gold Shares ETF (GLD) celebrated its 20-year anniversary this week. It is the world’s largest physically backed gold ETF, and it’s up more than 30% in 2024.
“Gold was $450 an ounce [20 years ago],” said Milling-Stanley. “It’s now five times what that price was then. If you look at a five-times price, then gold should be somewhere over $100,000 in twenty years’ time.”
Gold just had its best weekly performance since March 2023. Gold futures settled at $2,712.20 on Friday, the highest settle since Nov. 5. Gold prices are now just 3% below the record high hit on Oct. 30.
Bitcoin, which has surged since the Nov. 5 election, is having a banner year, too. It hit an all-time high on Friday.

Milling-Stanley thinks investors who treasure gold’s safety qualities should reconsider piling into bitcoin. He suggests the crypto world is trying to manipulate them.
“This is why they [bitcoin promoters] called it mining. There’s no mining involved. This is a computer operation, pure and simple,” he said. “But they called it mining because they wanted to seem like gold — maybe take some of the aura away from the gold.”
Yet, he acknowledges it is unclear how high the yellow metal can actually go.
“I have no idea what’s going to happen over the next 20 years except it’s going to be a fun ride,” Milling-Stanley said. “I think that gold is going to do well.”

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At last, white smoke has emerged from Mar-a-Lago. Two and a half weeks after the election and more than a week since it first seemed as if an announcement about a choice of treasury secretary was coming, Donald Trump has finally made his decision. On November 22nd the campaign said that Scott Bessent, a hedge-fund titan, would command 1500 Pennsylvania Avenue. Both the appointment of Mr Bessent, and the manner in which he was picked, offer clues about economic policy during a second Trump term. More

Many stocks have seen double-digit returns since Election Day.
That’s largely due to a combination of likely policy stances from the incoming Trump administration and positive quarterly earnings reports, experts said.
President-elect Donald Trump will likely back deregulation and adopt a less stringent stance on mergers and acquisitions, experts said.
Tesla stock also got an “Elon Musk premium,” one analyst said.

Stock traders on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange.
Michael M. Santiago | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Many large U.S. companies have seen their stocks swell since the presidential election.
The top 10 performing stocks in the S&P 500 index saw returns of 18% or more since Election Day, according to data provided by S&P Global Market Intelligence, which analyzed returns based on closing prices from Nov. 5 to Nov. 20.

Two companies — Axon Enterprise (AXON), which provides law-enforcement technology, and Tesla (TSLA), the electric-vehicle maker led by Elon Musk, an advisor to President-elect Donald Trump — saw their stocks gain more than 35%, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
By contrast, the S&P 500 gained about 2% over the same period.

‘Usually a bad idea’ to buy on short-term gain

Investors should be cautious about buying individual stocks based on short-term boosts, said Jeremy Goldberg, a certified financial planner, portfolio manager and research analyst at Professional Advisory Services, Inc., which ranked No. 37 on CNBC’s annual Financial Advisor 100 list.
“It’s usually a bad idea,” Goldberg said. “Momentum is a powerful force in the market, but relying solely on short-term price moves as an investment strategy is risky.”
Investors should understand what’s driving the movement and whether the factors pushing up a stock price are sustainable, Goldberg said.

Why did these stocks outperform?

Lofty stock returns were partly driven by Trump administration policy stances expected to benefit certain companies and industries, investment experts said.
Deregulation and a softer view toward mergers and acquisitions are two “key” themes driving bullish sentiment after Trump’s win, said Jacob Manoukian, head of U.S. investment strategy at J.P. Morgan Private Bank.

Relying solely on short-term price moves as an investment strategy is risky.

Jeremy Goldberg
portfolio manager and research analyst at Professional Advisory Services, Inc.

Additionally, U.S. regulators will likely be much less stringent about allowing potential mergers during Trump’s second term, experts said.
Companies in the streaming ecosystem — like Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), which owns the Max streaming service, and Disney+ owner The Walt Disney Co. (DIS) — may be benefactors of looser rules around consolidation, they said.

Rosy earnings and AI

For some stocks, outperformance was tied to rosy quarterly earnings results or guidance that some companies reported around or after Election Day, experts said.
Many such businesses cited artificial intelligence as a growth driver.
For example, Palantir Technologies (PLTR), cited “unprecedented” demand for its AI platform in the third quarter, helping deliver “exceptionally strong” earnings, Treasurer and CFO David Glazer told investors Nov. 4.

Likewise, Axon beat analysts’ estimates in its Nov. 7 earnings results, with officials touting its “AI era plan” and raising earnings guidance, Goldberg said.
Axon and Palantir stocks were up 38% and 22%, respectively, from Nov. 5 to Nov. 20, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence.
Some companies benefited from a combination of policy and earnings, experts said.

Rows of servers fill Data Hall B at Facebook’s Fort Worth Data Center in Texas.
Paul Moseley/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Tribune News Service via Getty Images

Take Vistra Corp. (VST), an energy provider, for example. The company’s stock jumped 27% after Election Day.
Vistra is in talks with large data centers — or “hyperscalers” — in Texas, Pennsylvania and Ohio to build or upgrade gas and nuclear plants, Stacey Doré, Vistra’s chief strategy and sustainability officer, said on the company’s Q3 earnings call Nov. 7.
Tech companies are building more and more such data centers to fuel the AI revolution — and need to source increasing amounts of energy to run them.

The ‘Elon Musk premium’

And then there’s the Elon Musk factor.
Tesla’s stock got an “Elon Musk premium” from Trump’s victory, said Goldberg of Professional Advisory Services.
Musk, Tesla’s CEO, was one of Trump’s top campaign backers. Trump tapped him to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency. Shares of the electric-vehicle maker soared 14% the day after the election and almost 30% by week’s end.

President-elect Donald Trump and Elon Musk talk ring side during the UFC 309 event at Madison Square Garden on Nov. 16, 2024 in New York.
Chris Unger | Ufc | Getty Images

But Tesla stock has additional tailwinds, experts said.
For one, Trump wants to end a $7,500 federal tax credit for EVs. Scrapping that policy is expected to hurt Tesla’s EV rivals.
Tesla has also been developing technology for driverless vehicles. In Tesla’s recent earnings call, Musk said he’d use his influence in Trump’s administration to establish a “federal approval process for autonomous vehicles.” More

Thousands of Americans will receive little or nothing from savings accounts that were locked during the collapse of fintech middleman Synapse.
Customers believed the accounts were backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
CNBC spoke to a dozen customers caught in the predicament, people who have lost sums ranging from $7,000 to well over $200,000.
While there’s not yet a full tally of those left shortchanged, at fintech Yotta alone, 13,725 customers say they are being offered a combined $11.8 million despite putting in $64.9 million in deposits.

Oscar Wong | Moment | Getty Images

For 15 years, former Texas schoolteacher Kayla Morris put every dollar she could save into a home for her growing family.
When she and her husband sold the house last year, they stowed away the proceeds, $282,153.87, in what they thought of as a safe place — an account at the savings startup Yotta held at a real bank.

Morris, like thousands of other customers, was snared in the collapse of a behind-the-scenes fintech firm called Synapse and has been locked out of her account for six months as of November. She held out hope that her money was still secure. Then she learned how much Evolve Bank & Trust, the lender where her funds were supposed to be held, was prepared to return to her.
“We were informed last Monday that Evolve was only going to pay us $500 out of that $280,000,” Morris said during a court hearing last week, her voice wavering. “It’s just devastating.”
The crisis started in May when a dispute between Synapse and Evolve Bank over customer balances boiled over and the fintech middleman turned off access to a key system used to process transactions. Synapse helped fintech startups like Yotta and Juno, which are not banks, offer checking accounts and debit cards by hooking them up with small lenders like Evolve.
In the immediate aftermath of Synapse’s bankruptcy, which happened after an exodus of its fintech clients, a court-appointed trustee found that up to $96 million of customer funds was missing.
The mystery of where those funds are hasn’t been solved, despite six months of court-mediated efforts between the four banks involved. That’s mostly because the estate of Andreessen Horowitz-backed Synapse doesn’t have the money to hire an outside firm to perform a full reconciliation of its ledgers, according to Jelena McWilliams, the bankruptcy trustee.

But what is now clear is that regular Americans like Morris are bearing the brunt of that shortfall and will receive little or nothing from savings accounts that they believed were backed by the full faith and credit of the U.S. government.
The losses demonstrate the risks of a system where customers didn’t have direct relationships with banks, instead relying on startups to keep track of their funds, who offloaded that responsibility onto middlemen like Synapse.

Zach Jacobs, 37, of Tampa, Florida helped form a group called Fight For Our Funds after losing more than $94,000 that he had in a fintech savings account called Yotta.
Courtesy: Zach Jacobs

‘Reverse bank robbery’

There are thousands of others like Morris. While there’s not yet a full tally of those left shortchanged, at Yotta alone, 13,725 customers say they are being offered a combined $11.8 million despite putting in $64.9 million in deposits, according to figures shared by Yotta co-founder and CEO Adam Moelis.
CNBC spoke to a dozen customers caught in this predicament, people who are owed sums ranging from $7,000 to well over $200,000.
From FedEx drivers to small business owners, teachers to dentists, they described the loss of years of savings after turning to fintechs like Yotta for the higher interest rates on offer, for innovative features or because they were turned away from traditional banks.
One Yotta customer, Zach Jacobs, logged onto Evolve’s website on Nov. 4 to find he was getting back just $128.68 of the $94,468.92 he had deposited — and he decided to act.

Arrows pointing outwards

Zach Jacobs decided to act after logging onto Evolve’s website on Nov. 4 to find he was getting just $128.68 of his $94,468.92 in deposits.
Courtesy: Zach Jacobs

The 37-year-old Tampa, Florida-based business owner began organizing with other victims online, creating a board of volunteers for a group called Fight For Our Funds. It’s his hope that they gain attention from press and politicians.
So far, 3,454 people have signed on, saying they’ve lost a combined $30.4 million.
“When you tell people about this, it’s like, ‘There’s no way this can happen,'” Jacobs said. “A bank just robbed us. This is the first reverse bank robbery in the history of America.”
Andrew Meloan, a chemical engineer from Chicago, said he had hoped to see the return of $200,000 he’d deposited with Yotta. Early this month, he received an unexpected PayPal remittance from Evolve for $5.
“When I signed up, they gave me an Evolve routing and account number,” Meloan said. “Now they’re saying they only have $5 of my money, and the rest is someplace else. I feel like I’ve been conned.”

A bank just robbed us. This is the first reverse bank robbery in the history of America.”

Zach Jacobs
Yotta customer

Cracks in the system

Unlike meme stocks or crypto bets, in which the user naturally assumes some risk, most customers viewed funds held in Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.-backed accounts as the safest place to keep their money. People relied on accounts powered by Synapse for everyday expenses like buying groceries and paying rent, or for saving for major life events like home purchases or surgeries.
Several people CNBC interviewed said signing up seemed like a good bet since Yotta and other fintechs advertised that deposits were FDIC-insured through Evolve.
“We were assured that this was just a savings account,” Morris said during last week’s hearing. “We are not risk-takers, we’re not gamblers.”
A Synapse contract that customers received after signing up for checking accounts stated that user money was insured by the FDIC for up to $250,000, according to a version seen by CNBC.
“According to the FDIC, no depositor has ever lost a penny of FDIC-insured funds,” the 26 page contract states.

‘We are responsible’

Abandoned by U.S. regulators who have so far declined to act, they are left with few clear options to recoup their money.
In June, the FDIC made it clear that its insurance fund doesn’t cover the failure of nonbanks like Synapse, and that in the event of such a firm’s failure, recovering funds through the courts wasn’t guaranteed.
The next month, the Federal Reserve said that as Evolve’s primary federal regulator it would monitor the bank’s progress “in returning all customer funds” to users.
“We are responsible for working to ensure that the bank operates in a safe and sound manner and complies with applicable laws, including laws protecting consumers,” Fed general counsel Mark E. Van Der Weide said in a letter.
In September, the FDIC proposed a new rule that would force banks to keep detailed records for customers of fintech apps, improving the chances that they qualify for coverage in a future calamity and cutting the risk that funds would go missing.
McWilliams, herself a former FDIC chair during the first Trump presidency, told the California judge handling the Synapse bankruptcy case last week she was “disheartened” that every financial regulator has decided not to help.
The FDIC and Fed declined to comment for this story, and McWilliams didn’t respond to emails.

Jelena McWilliams, chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, testifies during a House Financial Services Committee hearing in Rayburn Building titled “Oversight of Prudential Regulators: Ensuring the Safety, Soundness and Accountability of Megabanks and Other Depository Institutions,” on Thursday, May 16, 2019.
Tom Williams | CQ-Roll Call, Inc. | Getty Images

Winners and losers

Things hadn’t always seemed so dire. Early in the proceedings, McWilliams suggested to Judge Martin Barash that customers be given a partial payment, essentially spreading the pain among everyone.
But that would’ve required more coordination between Evolve and the other lenders that held customer funds than what ultimately happened.
As the hearings dragged on, the three other institutions, AMG National Trust, Lineage Bank and American Bank, began disbursing the funds they had, while Evolve took months to perform what it initially said would be a comprehensive reconciliation.
Around the time Evolve completed its efforts in October, it said it could only figure out the user funds it held, not the location of the missing funds. That’s at least partly because of “very large bulk transfers” of funds without identification of who owned the money, a lawyer for Evolve testified last week.
As a result, the bankruptcy process has minted relative winners and losers.
Some end users recently received all their funds back, while others, like Indiana FedEx driver Natasha Craft, received none, she told CNBC.

Natasha Craft, a 25-year-old FedEx driver from Mishawaka, Indiana. She has been locked out of her Yotta banking account since May 11.
Courtesy: Natasha Craft

As of Nov. 12, the four banks released $193 million to customers, or more than 85% of what they held earlier in the year.
The Nov. 13 hearing has provided the only public venue for victims to register their distress; dozens of victims queued up in the hopes they could testify about receiving a tiny fraction of what they’re owed. The event went longer than three hours.
“You can’t imagine the panic when it said I was getting 81 cents,” said Andreatte Caliguire, who said she is owed $22,000. “I have no money, I have no path forward, I have nothing.”

‘Nothing optimistic’

Evolve says that “the vast majority” of funds held for Yotta and other customers were moved to other banks in October and November of 2023 on directions from Synapse, according to an Evolve spokesman. 
“Where those end user funds went after that is an important question, but unfortunately not one Evolve can answer with the data it currently has,” the spokesman said.
Yotta says that Evolve has given fintech firms and the trustee no information about how it determined payouts, “despite acknowledging in court that a shortfall existed at Evolve prior to October 2023,” according to a spokesman for the startup, who noted that several executives have recently left the bank. “We hope regulators take notice and act.”
In statements released ahead of this month’s hearing, Evolve said that other banks refused to participate in its efforts to create a master ledger, while AMG and Lineage said that Evolve’s implication that they had the missing funds was “irresponsible and disingenuous.”
As the banks and other parties hurl accusations at each other and lawsuits pile up, including pending class-action efforts, the window for cooperation is rapidly closing, Barash said last week.
“As time goes by, my impression is that unless the banks that are involved can sort this out voluntarily, it may not get sorted out,” Barash said. “There’s nothing optimistic about what I’m telling you.”

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