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For Trump, It’s a New Era of Deal-Making With Tech’s Most-Coveted Commodity

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As the president heads to the Middle East, America’s dominance over A.I. chips has become a powerful source of leverage for the president.As President Trump tours the Middle East this week, governments that are flush with oil wealth will be focused on a different treasure, found in America’s Silicon Valley.Artificial intelligence chips, which are made by U.S. companies like Nvidia and AMD, are highly coveted by governments across the Middle East. Leaders of Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates want to pour billions of dollars into the construction of data centers to put their countries at the forefront of a new technology heralded for its power to disrupt businesses and create trillions of dollars in economic value.The Gulf States have plenty of energy and cash to build data centers, which house the supercomputers that run A.I. systems. But they need U.S. government approval to buy the American-designed chips to power them. The Biden administration had been wary of allowing such purchases. But the Trump administration appears more interested in using A.I. chips to secure strategic bonds in a region where Mr. Trump has deep financial and business ties.The technology is expected to be the focus of much deal making during the president’s trip. Officials from the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia are likely to try to strike agreements with the Trump administration to obtain steady access to A.I. chips in the years to come. And the Trump administration is expected to showcase deals and negotiations across the region by American tech companies, including AMD, Nvidia, Microsoft, Google and OpenAI, according to half a dozen people familiar with the plans.Tech executives including Jensen Huang of Nvidia, Sam Altman of OpenAI, Lisa Su of AMD and Ruth Porat of Alphabet are scheduled to travel to the Middle East, with some rubbing shoulders with Saudi ministers and White House officials at an investment forum that will focus partly on partnerships in A.I. and data centers.The United States began regulating A.I. chips systematically during the Biden administration, because of their value in helping governments develop military and surveillance technologies. While many Trump officials are also concerned about the national security implications of selling A.I. chips abroad, some are more willing than their predecessors to deploy the chips as a broader source of leverage globally, potentially playing into trade talks and other negotiations.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

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    Trump’s Threatened Tariffs Are So Large, 10% Feels Like a Relief

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    As he proposes ever stiffer tariffs, President Trump has normalized his merely big ones.There has been a mantra spreading among weary corporate executives who are becoming resigned to President Trump’s tariffs while still hoping to avoid the worst of their effects: Ten percent is the new zero.The statement refers to the 10 percent tariff that Mr. Trump put in place on most U.S. imports one month ago. Such a significant increase in U.S. tariffs would have been unthinkable a few years ago. But it no longer seems like such a big deal, compared with the truly large tariffs that Mr. Trump has already imposed or threatened elsewhere.Mr. Trump’s “Liberation Day” announcement on April 2 that he was planning tariffs of 10 percent to 60 percent on dozens of America’s trading partners set off a rout in the bond markets and a flight from the U.S. dollar as investors panicked at the prospect of an economically devastating trade war. Mr. Trump also ratcheted up tariffs on China to a minimum of 145 percent amid a trade spat with Beijing, bringing much of the trade between the countries to a halt.That turmoil appears to have moderated Mr. Trump’s impulses somewhat. The president quickly paused tariffs on most countries, giving them 90 days to negotiate trade deals instead.Mr. Trump also granted a lucrative exemption from China tariffs for makers of electronics and offered some limited relief for automakers. And he has hinted that he could do more, saying he likes to be “flexible.”Investors have lapped up any signs of good news, even insubstantial ones. Stock markets have now regained nearly all of the losses they sustained after April 2, buoyed by comments from Trump administration officials that they are working to close trade deals with allies and planning to meet with Chinese counterparts to discuss their standoff.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

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    Scott Bessent Urges Investors to Bet on Trump’s Economic Plan

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    The Treasury secretary urged executives and entrepreneurs to look beyond the Trump administration’s trade agenda.Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent urged skittish global business leaders on Monday to ignore President Trump’s economic naysayers and ramp up investment in the United States, defending an economic agenda that economists warn will slow economic growth and exacerbate inflation.Speaking to executives, entrepreneurs and policymakers, Mr. Bessent argued that the Trump administration’s economic plans go beyond trade policy and will pay off in the long run. He urged them to also focus on Mr. Trump’s plans to cut taxes and regulation, which he said would spur job creation and output.“Tariffs are engineered to encourage companies like yours to invest directly in the United States,” Mr. Bessent said in remarks at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles. “You’ll be glad you did — not only because we have the most productive work force in the world. But because we will soon have the most favorable tax and regulatory environment as well.”His comments came just hours after Mr. Trump ordered up new tariffs on foreign film producers, a decision that left many in Hollywood puzzled about how such a tax would work.The Treasury secretary has been working to ease concerns among investors that Mr. Trump’s trade plans will destabilize the global economy. Last month the president levied tariffs on countries around the world and escalated a trade fight with China, which sent financial markets plunging.Since then, Mr. Bessent has been racing to negotiate trade deals with dozens of countries. He has also signaled that the China tariffs are not sustainable, offering hope that Mr. Trump would soon begin negotiations to lower them.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

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    Howard Lutnick, Trump’s ‘Buoyant’ Trade Warrior, Flexes His Power Over Global Business

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    Since Howard Lutnick was tapped to serve as President Trump’s commerce secretary, executives from some of the world’s largest companies have been trying to win him over.Leaders of Nvidia, Facebook, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company and Alphabet have visited his newly purchased $25 million property in Washington — a 16,250-square-foot mansion that Mr. Lutnick, a billionaire, recently quipped would be “big enough for my ego” — to persuade him to adopt a business-friendly agenda.As Mr. Trump ratcheted up tariffs to levels not seen in a century, Ford Motor, General Motors and other companies that have built their businesses around international trade reached out to Mr. Lutnick in the hope that he could persuade the president to take a less aggressive approach. Some chief executives have put in calls to the commerce secretary at midnight.Mr. Lutnick, 63, heads a department that both promotes and regulates industry, and he has been put in charge of overseeing trade. As a result, he has found himself in a position of incredible influence, as the go-between for a president imposing sweeping tariffs and the industries being crushed by them.A former bond trader who amassed billions on Wall Street, Mr. Lutnick has become one of the loudest salesmen for tariffs in an administration generally unified on their benefits. He has publicly echoed the president’s message that big tariffs are needed to revive American industry, and that if companies don’t like them, they should build factories in the United States.But in internal conversations in the administration, he has often been a voice for moderation. He argued in favor of Mr. Trump’s pausing his global tariffs for 90 days after they sent convulsions through the stock and bond markets. And he has made the case to the president to grant relief to certain favored industries, helping them to win exemptions from billions of dollars of levies.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

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    Trump Team Races to Form Trade Deals After Tariffs Sow Global Chaos

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    The president’s threats of tariffs have brought countries like Japan, South Korea and India rushing to negotiate, but they have sown chaos with bigger trading partners like China.For a president who advertises himself as a paramount deal maker, the next 11 weeks will be a pivotal test, as his advisers race to accomplish what no other administration has done before and reach dozens of individual trade deals with other governments.President Trump has promised big gains for American trade, and officials from Japan, South Korea, India and elsewhere have been pushing for agreements as they look to forestall punishing tariffs. But trade experts say the administration has set up a seemingly impossible task, given that traditional trade deals typically take months or years to negotiate.Mr. Trump has tried to use tariffs as leverage to notch quick agreements, and his trade adviser, Peter Navarro, has promised “90 deals in 90 days.” But the levies are creating chaos and financial pain for many businesses, and they have not brought some of America’s largest trading partners, including China, to the table.Some U.S. trade with China has ground to a halt after the countries imposed triple-digit tariffs on each others’ products, and a wave of bankruptcies, especially among small U.S. businesses that rely on Chinese imports, appears to be looming if the trade barriers are maintained.Some Trump officials recognize that the situation with China is not sustainable and have been strategizing how to reduce the tariffs between the countries, two people familiar with the discussions said. Another person familiar with the discussions said administration officials were concerned about the hit to the stock market, which has experienced intense volatility and some of its worst trading days in years. The S&P 500 is down 10 percent since Mr. Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration.Speaking from the Oval Office on Wednesday, Mr. Trump said he wanted to make a deal with China. But he said what happens with his tariffs on China “depends on them.” He denied any concerns about what the tariffs are doing to small businesses, but said that the high tariff “basically means China isn’t doing any business with us.”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

  • 150 Shares179 Views

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    The Trump Billionaires Who Run the Economy and the Things They Say

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    “You have to laugh to keep from crying,” one Republican pollster said about recent comments by the billionaires on the stock market, retirement funds and Social Security.Sometimes the billionaires running the federal government sound like they’re talking to other billionaires.“THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!” President Trump wrote on social media last week, offering a stock tip that appeared aimed at the investor class rather than ordinary Americans watching their plummeting 401(k)s.Howard Lutnick, the secretary of commerce, has said his mother-in-law wouldn’t be worried if she didn’t get her monthly Social Security check. Elon Musk, who is slashing the Social Security Administration’s staff, has called it a “Ponzi scheme.” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has asserted that Americans aren’t looking at the “day-to-day fluctuations” in their retirement savings.And if automakers raise their prices because of Mr. Trump’s tariffs? “I couldn’t care less,” the president told Kristen Welker of NBC.Democrats say the comments show how clueless Mr. Trump and his friends are about the lives of most Americans, and that this is what happens when billionaires run the economy. Republicans counter that highlighting the quotes is unfair cherry picking, and that in the long run everyone will benefit from their policies, even if there’s pain now. Psychologists say that extreme wealth does change people and their views of those who have less.Whoever is right, it is safe to say that almost no one thinks the comments have been politically helpful for Mr. Trump, or calming for Americans.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

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    Trump Shifted on Tariffs After Bond Holders Got Jittery. He Held Millions Himself.

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    As of August, the president’s investment portfolio showed significantly more in bonds than in stocks. It is unclear if his personal holdings had any bearing on his decisions regarding tariffs.When President Trump paused a punishing round of global tariffs last week, he attributed his change of heart to one main thing.“I was watching the bond market,” he said. “The bond market is very tricky.”Mr. Trump should know — he had a big personal stake in it.A New York Times analysis of Mr. Trump’s financial holdings shows that he had roughly $125 million to about $443 million invested in bonds as of last year, a range that far eclipsed his investment portfolio’s exposure to the stock market.Mr. Trump does own a huge stake in his publicly traded social media company, Trump Media & Technology Group, but he has said he has no plans to sell those shares, currently worth roughly $2 billion. The company’s stock, which he listed separately from his liquid stock and bond holdings on his latest financial disclosure, had already plunged about 40 percent this year before the new round of tariffs.Mr. Trump appeared unfazed when the tariffs sent the stock market into a tailspin, wiping out trillions of dollars in value in a matter of days.His nonchalance faded on April 9 after fears over the impact of Mr. Trump’s tariffs had spread to the government bond market, posing a potential existential threat to the global economy and signaling a weakening faith in U.S.-backed assets as a safe haven. Mr. Trump, whose own bond investments were also at risk, paused the most punitive of the import taxes for 90 days for all countries except China.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

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    Investors Seeking Safety Look to German Government Bonds

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    Germany has long taken flak from Wall Street and financial capitals around Europe for the extreme fiscal conservatism that has kept the country’s debt levels low. But as global markets convulsed this week, investors rewarded Germany’s caution by snapping up its government bonds, which are known as bunds.Investors have reeled after President Trump imposed 10 percent tariffs on nearly every trading partner, temporarily rescinded even higher “reciprocal” tariffs hours after they came into effect and steadily ratcheted up tariffs on China to well above 100 percent.The resulting tumult hit U.S. assets hard, including Treasuries and the dollar, normally considered haven assets. That sent investors seeking other places for safety, such as gold, the Swiss franc and German bunds.The 10-year yield on German bunds, which moves inversely to prices, fell to 2.56 percent, near its lowest level in more than a month. That is notable relative to the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield, arguably the most important interest rate in the world, which has soared higher. On Friday, the 10-year U.S. yield was around 4.5 percent, climbing nearly half a percentage point in one week, a huge move in that market.Germany’s strict limits on government borrowing have given the country a stellar AAA credit rating. But last month, lawmakers decided that the next government could abandon the borrowing limit and take on trillions of euros in fresh debt to bolster the country’s military and crumbling public infrastructure. Germany’s export-driven economy is also heavily exposed to tariffs, given the large amount of trade its automakers and other industrial companies do with the United States.The prospect of extra borrowing and a slowing economy had begun to put pressure on German bunds. But the turmoil elsewhere in recent weeks prompted investors to turn back to the country’s debt as a source of safety.This week, Germany’s expected next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, also announced the blueprint for his government, which included an economic plan to jump-start the ailing German economy. And ahead of its planned borrowing binge, Germany benefits from low debt relative to the size of its economy, at about 60 percent of gross domestic product. By comparison, U.S. debt is about 120 percent of the size of its economy.It was “very striking” that in a moment of stress German bunds were acting as the “haven of choice” instead of U.S. Treasuries, said Sander Tordoir, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, a research institute.“There does seem to be a real safety premium now being place on German government debt,” he said. More

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    Bond Market is Upended by Trump’s Tariffs

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    The bedrock of the financial system trembled this week, with government bond yields rising sharply as the chaotic rollout of tariffs shook investors’ faith in the pivotal role played by the United States in the financial system.U.S. government bonds, known as Treasuries because they are issued by the U.S. Treasury, are backed by the full faith of the American government, and the market for Treasuries has long been deemed one of the safest and most stable in the world.But the Treasury market’s erratic behavior all week has raised fears that investors are turning against U.S. assets as President Trump’s trade war escalates.The yield on the 10-year Treasury, which underpins corporate and consumer borrowing and is arguably the most important interest rate in the world, rose roughly 0.1 percentage points on Friday. The rise added to sharp moves throughout the week that have taken the yield on the 10-year Treasury from less than 4 percent at the end of last week to around 4.5 percent.These increases may seem small, but they are large moves in the Treasury market, prompting investors to warn that Mr. Trump’s tariff policies are causing serious turmoil. It matters to consumers as well. If you have a mortgage or car loan, for example, then the interest rate you pay is related to the 10-year yield.Ten-year treasuries are also considered a safe haven for investors during time of volatility in the stock market, but this week’s sharp rise in yields have made this market unusually perilous.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