Yen climbs to 143.6 as Trump stirs trade tension
The Japanese yen strengthened to near 143.6 per dollar levels on Thursday, building on its earlier gains as investors sought safety amid fresh trade tensions. US President Donald Trump reignited market jitters by announcing his intention to dispatch tariff letters to key trade partners within a fortnight, aiming to push for more favorable deals. The heightened trade uncertainty has revived risk-off sentiment, supporting demand for the yen. Meanwhile, Japans export-heavy economy is showing signs of strain, with business sentiment deteriorating further in the second quarter, partly due to concerns over evolving US trade policy.
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Mint
23 minutes ago
- Mint
GDP's dirty little secret: Why we should be tracking GVA instead
Gross domestic product (GDP) growth rate is the headline number everyone tracks to figure out how the economy is doing. It's time we shifted focus to gross value added, or GVA, which is a more direct measure of the incomes generated in the economy. That's because GDP numbers are affected by random decisions by the GST Council to raise tax rates or by the government to slash subsidies. Cut subsidies, boost growth. Such a prescription might seem like snake oil for the consumption of the simpleminded. But cutting subsidies has, indeed, been the simple route to boost GDP growth in India. India's GDP growth in the final quarter of 2024-25 was a dramatic 7.4%. The growth in GVA, which is what counts for creating jobs and putting income in the hands of people, was a more modest 6.8%. The divergence between the growth rates of GDP (6.5%) and GVA (6.4%) has been modest for 2024-25 as a whole. It was starker in 2023-24, when the GDP growth rate was 9.2%, while GVA grew by only 8.6%. The more subsidies are cut, the greater the boost GDP growth gets over GVA growth. Also read | Growth in charts: GDP-GVA divide, export silver lining, capex push India is not accustomed to the chainsaw breed of fiscal conservatism that Elon Musk vocally championed before his high-profile breakup with US President Donald Trump. In the US, the notion that cutting welfare expenditure and other subsidies will make for a healthier fisc and a more robust economy is part of the mainstream narrative, at least on one side of the political divide. The conventional wisdom in Republican circles is that ridding government expenditure of waste and excess would make room for lower government borrowing and lower taxes, and these two would, combined with a dose of deregulation, boost growth. In India, too, many economists have used this approach – not to genuinely foster growth, but rather to dismiss the government's significant role in the economy by labelling it 'socialism' that curtails capitalist dynamism. The NDA government came to power as a slayer of big government and socialism. It once portrayed the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme as a monument of national failure. But, in the face of revealed distress in the economy, it has also assiduously funded the scheme, regardless of how this made the 'monument of failure' shine brighter. There is a big difference between the role the state and subsidies play in an economy like the US and in India, whose per-capita GDP is 3% of the US's $89,000. The way India's GDP is computed allows for a lower subsidy bill to boost GDP, whatever the role of subsidies in supporting subsistence and sustaining growth. GVA is what really matters While GDP is the headline number on everyone's radar, what matters for creating jobs and incomes is GVA. GVA and GDP are highly correlated but not quite the same. The total value that is generated in an economy breaks down into gross profits and the sum total of wages and salaries. GDP is the value of all final goods and services produced and sold in the economy, whether for consumption, investment or export, net of the imports that go into the production of those goods and services. By taking into account only the final goods, we avoid double counting. Steel goes into machinery, construction, washing machines and safety pins. We look at only the value of these final goods, and not the value of the steel produced. Also read | Kaushik Basu: Redefine prosperity; GDP tunnel-vision could prove costly National income can be estimated either from the income side or the expenditure side. Data on income is hard to capture directly on a comprehensive basis, and it is easier to estimate the expenditure on things. When you buy pills, an X-Ray machine, or lab test, what you pay for includes the tax on the good or service. Some of the goods you buy are subsidised by the government, so the price is lower than the actual value – grain from the fair price shop, or electricity in many states for certain classes of consumers are just two examples of this. So, to arrive at the GVA of the economy, you must add up the total expenditure on final goods and services, which will give you GDP, subtract the taxes borne by these goods and services, and add back the subsidies that artificially lowered your expenditure. In other words, GVA = GDP - tax + subsidy. In other words, GDP = GVA + tax - subsidy. Taxes net of subsidies are called net taxes. So GDP = GVA + net taxes. 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Time of India
44 minutes ago
- Time of India
Trump reports tens of millions in income from crypto ventures
Live Events U.S. President Donald Trump reported hundreds of millions of dollars in income from crypto , golf clubs and licensing ventures in a public financial disclosure report released on Friday that provided a glimpse of the vast business holdings of America's billionaire annual financial disclosure form, which appeared to cover the 2024 calendar year, shows the president's push into crypto added substantially to his wealth but he also reported large fees from developments and revenues from his other Trump has said he has put his businesses into a trust managed by his children, the disclosures show how income from them still ultimately accrue to the president - something that has opened him to conflicts of interest. Some of his businesses in areas such as crypto, for example, benefit from U.S. policy shifts under him and have become a source of White House did not immediately respond to a request for financial disclosure was signed on June 13 and did not state the time period it covered. The details of the cryptocurrency listings, as well as other information in the disclosure, suggest it was through the end of December 2024, which would exclude most of the money raised by the family's cryptocurrency the speed at which the Trump family has made deals during his ascent to the presidency, the filing is already a time capsule of sorts, capturing a period when they were just starting to get into crypto but were largely still in the world of real estate deals and golf clubs.A meme coin released earlier this year by the president - $TRUMP - alone has earned an estimated $320 million in fees, though it's not publicly known how that amount has been divided between a Trump-controlled entity and its addition to the meme coin fees, the Trump family has raked in more than $400 million from World Liberty Financial, a decentralized finance company. The Trump family is involved, also, with a bitcoin mining operation and digital asset exchange-traded the disclosures, Trump reported $57.35 million from token sales at World Liberty. He also reported holding 15.75 billion governance tokens in the wealth of the Republican businessman-turned-politician ranges from crypto to real estate, and a large part on paper is tied up in his stake in Trump Media & Technology Group, owner of social media platform Truth disclosure showed income from various assets including Trump's properties in Florida. Trump's three golf-focused resorts in the state - Jupiter, Doral and West Palm Beach - plus his nearby private members' club at Mar-a-Lago generated at least $217.7 million in income, according to the disclosure also listed income of $5 million in license fees from a development in collected royalty money, also, from a variety of deals - $1.3 million from the Greenwood Bible (its website describes it as "the only Bible officially endorsed by Lee Greenwood and President Trump"); $2.8 million from Trump Watches, and $2.5 million from Trump Sneakers and listed $1.16 million in income from his NFTs - digital trading cards in his likeness while First Lady Melania Trump earned around $216,700 from license fees her own NFT collection.
India Today
an hour ago
- India Today
Trump approves $14.9 billion US steel merger with Japan's Nippon Steel
U.S President Donald Trump formally approved Nippon Steel's 5401.T fraught $14.9 billion bid for U.S. Steel X.N on Friday, capping a tumultuous 18-month effort by the companies, beset by union opposition and two national security signed an executive order saying the tie-up could move forward if the companies signed an agreement with the Treasury Department resolving national security concerns posed by the deal. The companies then announced they had signed the agreement, fulfilling the conditions of Trump's directive and effectively garnering approval for the look forward to putting our commitments into action to make American steelmaking and manufacturing great again," the companies said in the statement, thanking Trump. They added the agreement includes $11 billion in new investments to be made by 2028 as well as governance, production and trade commitments. A golden share would be issued to the U.S. government, the companies added without providing further previously reported that Nippon would invest an additional $3 billion for a new mill after takeover will set up the ailing American steel icon to receive the critical investment, and allow Nippon Steel to capitalize on a host of American infrastructure projects, as its foreign competitors face steel tariffs of 50%. It also absolves the Japanese firm of paying $565 million in breakup fees if the companies failed to secure GREAT PARTNERWhile many investors saw approval as likely after Trump headlined a rally on May 30 giving his vague blessing to an "investment" by Nippon Steel, which he described as a "great partner", Friday's announcement was hardly of U.S. Steel had dipped earlier on Friday after a Nippon Steel executive told the Japanese Nikkei newspaper that its planned takeover of U.S. Steel required "a degree of management freedom" to go ahead after Trump earlier had said the U.S. would be in control with a golden bid, first announced by Nippon Steel in December 2023, has faced opposition from the start. Both Democratic former President Joe Biden and Trump, a Republican, asserted last year that U.S. Steel should remain U.S.-owned, as they sought to woo voters ahead of the presidential election in Pennsylvania, where the company is in January, shortly before leaving office, blocked the deal on national security grounds, prompting lawsuits by the companies, which argued the national security review they received was biased. The Biden White House disputed the steel companies saw a new opportunity in the Trump administration, which began on January 20 and opened a fresh 45-day national security review into the proposed merger in Trump's public comments, ranging from welcoming a simple "investment" in U.S. Steel by the Japanese firm to floating a minority stake for Nippon Steel, spurred InMust Watch
