End of U.S. exceptionalism: How to invest after the credit downgrade
Once a core strategy, 'U.S. exceptionalism' in trade faces headwinds as the recent U.S. credit downgrade, shifting policies, and tariffs raise doubts. Morgan Stanley's Jitania Kandhari and BNY's Adam Vos weigh in on what's ahead.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
LA immigration violence: Troops to stay in area for 60 days as Trump stays firm on protest response
Four thousand National Guard troops and 700 Marines are expected to remain in LA for 60 days, according to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. President Donald Trump said the National Guard would leave "when there's no danger". Follow live.
ABC News
2 hours ago
- ABC News
World Bank slashes global growth forecasts amid trade tariffs, economic uncertainty
The World Bank has slashed global growth forecasts for 2025, blaming tariffs and heightened uncertainty for some of the weakest economic conditions since the 2008 global financial crisis. In its twice-yearly Global Economic Prospects report, the bank lowered its forecasts for nearly 70 per cent of all economies, including the United States and Europe. It also downgraded growth for six emerging market regions from the levels it projected just six months ago — before US President Donald Trump took office. The projections factored in some of the the Trump administration's latest tariff policies, which have up-ended global trade and prompted significant business uncertainty. A series of on-again, off-again tariff hikes have increased the effective US tariff rate from below 3 per cent to the mid-teens — its highest level in almost a century — and triggered retaliation by China and other countries. The bank stopped short of forecasting a recession, but said global economic growth this year would be its weakest outside of a recession since 2008. By 2027, global gross domestic product (GDP) growth was expected to average just 2.5 per cent, the slowest pace of any decade since the 1960s. The World Bank's downgrade follows on from a similar move by the International Monetary Fund in April. At the time, the IMF said Australia's economic growth would be impacted and also warned of "upward revisions" to inflation in the US and other major western economies. The World Bank's latest forecast, released on Monday, showed economic growth in Australia's largest trading partner — China — was expected to slow to 4.5 per cent in 2025 and 4 per cent in 2026. "This is in line with the January forecast, reflecting the impacts of higher US tariffs and slower growth in major advanced economies, which are assumed to be offset by the announced fiscal policy support measures," the report said. It also noted that "in regions with a large number of commodity exporters … growth is expected to face drags from weakening outlook for external commodity demand". The report forecast that global trade would grow by 1.8 per cent in 2025, down from 3.4 per cent in 2024 and roughly a third of its 5.9 per cent level in the 2000s. The bank said global inflation was expected to reach 2.9 per cent in 2025, remaining above pre-COVID levels, given tariff increases and tight labour markets. The World Bank did not provide a projection for Australia, but the latest Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week showed domestic economic growth slowed to just 0.2 per cent in the March quarter. The US GDP forecast was slashed by 0.9 percentage points from its January forecast to 1.4 per cent, and the 2026 outlook was lowered by 0.4 percentage point to 1.6 per cent. Europe's economy could expect only a 0.7 per cent expansion in 2025. "Uncertainty remains a powerful drag, like fog on a runway. It slows investment and clouds the outlook," World Bank Deputy Chief Economist Ayhan Kose told Reuters in an interview. But the report warned poor countries would suffer the most, with developing economies likely to be 6 per cent smaller in 2027 than they were before the COVID-19 pandemic. It could take these countries — minus China — two decades to recoup the economic losses of the 2020s. ABC/Reuters
The Australian
3 hours ago
- The Australian
The White House marching orders that sparked the LA migrant crackdown
Even with the high-profile arrests of suspects by masked immigration agents and the plane loads of migrants swiftly ferried out of the US, President Trump was falling short of the number of daily deportations carried out by the Biden administration in its final year. So in late May, Stephen Miller, a top White House aide and the architect of the president's immigration agenda, addressed a meeting at the headquarters of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE. The message was clear: The president, who promised to deport millions of immigrants living in the country illegally, wasn't pleased. The agency had better step it up. Gang members and violent criminals, what Trump called the 'worst of the worst,' weren't the sole target of deportations. Federal agents needed to 'just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,' Miller told top ICE officials, who had come from across the US, according to people familiar with the meeting. Agents didn't need to develop target lists of immigrants suspected of being in the US illegally, a longstanding practice, Miller said. Instead, he directed them to target Home Depot, where day laborers typically gather for hire, or 7-Eleven convenience stores. Miller bet that he and a handful of agents could go out on the streets of Washington, D.C., and arrest 30 people right away. 'Who here thinks they can do it?' Miller said, asking for a show of hands. ICE agents appeared to follow Miller's tip and conducted an immigration sweep Friday at the Home Depot in the predominantly Latino neighborhood of Westlake in Los Angeles, helping set off a weekend of protests around Los Angeles County, including at the federal detention center in the city's downtown. On Saturday, Trump ordered 2,000 National Guard troops to Southern California, despite objections by Gov. Gavin Newsom. Protesters hold up a sign near police in riot gear outside the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) in Santa Ana, California. Picture: AFP Law-enforcement officers used tear gas, rubber bullets and flash-bang stun grenades against increasingly unruly crowds. Demonstrators threw tree branches, scooters, fireworks and debris from a freeway overpass onto police vehicles below. The unrest continued Monday and roughly 700 Marines were dispatched to protect federal property and personnel. 'To do this in militaristic gear in L.A. is intended to notch up the image of deportations being in high gear,' said Muzaffar Chishti, senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute. 'But the actual deportations are paltry compared with the imagery.' Since Miller's meeting with ICE officials, daily arrests have risen, according to ICE officials. There are no written directives, but officers have been told to 'do what you need to do' to make more arrests, according to current and former ICE officials familiar with the directives. The administration's immigration enforcement is a sharp break with past government practices, according to attorneys, immigration advocates and officials from previous administrations. Federal agents make warrantless arrests. Masked agents take people into custody without identifying themselves. Plainclothes agents in at least a dozen cities have arrested migrants who showed up to their court hearings. And across the US, people suspected of being in the country illegally are disappearing into the federal detention system without notice to families or lawyers, according to attorneys, witnesses and officials. In Coral Springs, Fla., at least eight agents in tactical gear, shields and rifles surrounded a home with guns raised to arrest a father with no criminal history. In Irvine, Calif., ICE agents drove a phalanx of military vehicles in the Orange County suburb to arrest a person, though not for illegal immigration. They were seeking a resident's son who had allegedly posted fliers alerting neighbors to the presence of ICE agents. The raid alarmed the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, an organization that defends free speech, which requested a copy of the warrant. 'Criticism of government officials is core protected speech, and to criticize them you have every right to identify them,' said Aaron Terr, the group's director of public advocacy. The Trump administration defends its tactics for arrests, including many documented in cellphone videos and posted on social media. ICE officers have been donning protective gear and concealing their faces because of threats, said Tom Homan, the White House border czar. 'They're simply trying to enforce the law, and they're trying to protect themselves,' he said. 'Keeping President Trump's promise to deport illegal aliens is something the administration takes seriously,' said Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman. Breaking glass The Trump administration hopes news reports and other publicity about its tough enforcement actions will prompt immigrants who are in the country illegally to leave the US voluntarily. Migrants have been offered a $1,000 payment if they document their departures. On social media, regional ICE offices post photos of immigrants taken into custody along with photos of burly ICE agents, their faces masked or blurred or their backs turned. 'Over the past 100 days, ICE and our partners have accomplished some amazing feats,' the ICE office in Houston posted on X. The Border Patrol's El Centro sector in Southern California posted photos of a broken car window on Facebook: The caption said, 'This illegal alien is listing his accomplishments for the past week: Refused to open window during an immigration inspection; Got his window shattered for an extraction.' An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent patrols the halls of immigration court at the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building Picture: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images/AFP Alfredo 'Lelo' Juarez Zeferino, a Washington state farmworkers union organizer, was another ICE target. Agents in an unmarked car stopped him as he was driving his wife to her job at a tulip farm. The agents, who didn't show badges or identification, smashed in his window and pulled him from the car, according to Familias Unidas por la Justica, a farmworker union. ICE has stopped regularly publishing arrest data, and has been accused of overstating the numbers. The Trump administration arrested roughly 66,500 migrants living in the US illegally and deported nearly 66,000 in its first 100 days, a higher pace of arrests compared with 2024, and a slightly slower pace for deportations. Earlier this year, ICE officials set daily arrest quotas and deputized agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law-enforcement agencies. ICE officials eliminated a Biden-era policy that blocked officers from arresting people without proof of legal residency who happened to be in the vicinity of targeted suspects. Raids at schools, churches and hospitals are now allowed. In February, two agents wearing tactical gear entered El Potro's Mexican Cafe and Cantina in Liberty, Mo., while another guarded the front door, according to a lawsuit filed in the US District Court in Chicago. In all, more than 10 agents participated. The ICE agents said they were looking for someone, but didn't say who, or provide a photograph, according to the lawsuit. Agents arrested 12 restaurant employees. The suit against the government alleges that the arrests were made without a warrant or probable cause that the workers would flee. In a court filing, much of which was redacted, the government said the arrests 'were supported by documented, probable cause determinations.' One problem for the administration was that ICE had only about 5,000 officers ready and trained to make arrests, according to an agency official. As ICE officers face more threats, they form ever-larger teams to conduct arrests, officials said. Larger teams means ICE can be in fewer places. Officials from the White House and the Department of Homeland Security have made clear there will be consequences for not hitting arrest targets. Top officials at DHS have pushed out one acting ICE director and are threatening a second. Late last month, the top ICE official overseeing arrests and deportations, Kenneth Genalo, resigned rather than fire deputies for poor performance, said people familiar with the matter. One reason deportations haven't picked up might be that ICE operations have received so much attention, prompting migrants to be more cautious, according to agents and leaders. Last kiss On a recent morning, half a dozen SUVs waited in the dark of a suburban neighborhood in San Antonio. Agents joked over the radio about how easy they were to spot: They had struggled to turn off their automatic headlights, and two neighbors drove around the block, peering into the agents' windows before returning to their driveways. Minutes later, their target, a Cuban father who worked at a local candy factory, began loading two young children into a red SUV. The agents initially planned to follow and arrest him after he had dropped the children at school. Instead, they decided to arrest him immediately because the children's mother was also in the car. With lights flashing, the SUVs converged on the car. The man stepped from the driver's seat with his hands up while the woman in the passenger seat scolded the agents for arresting him in front of the children. She asked if she could give her husband a kiss before they took him. None of the agents responded. The agents next tailed a yellow pickup through a taqueria restaurant drive-through line before arresting the driver. They let him go when he showed a Global Entry card proving he was a US citizen. Agents said they may have confused the man with his son. Elsewhere, Americans detained by ICE have said they were held for hours or longer before being allowed to prove their citizenship. Courthouse arrests have become a nationwide strategy, according to DHS officials and lawyers. They allow ICE to boost arrest numbers with fewer resources. It also puts migrants in a corner: Should they risk arrest by following the legal process and appearing in court? At a court in Phoenix last month, attorney Isaac Ortega said prosecutors requested dismissals for a string of cases, including that of his client, a Venezuelan man who had entered the US legally under a Biden administration program terminated by Trump. A Dominican man, left on the ground, and an activist are detained by plain clothes officers with ICE after an immigration hearing inside the Jacob K. Javitz Federal Building in New York. Picture: AP /Yuki Iwamura After the man left the hearing room, agents arrested him. They refused to identify themselves, answer questions or show a warrant. 'It was completely out of the norm,' Ortega said. Other lawyers say clients have been denied access to legal counsel. Luis Campos, a Tucson-based attorney, said a Border Patrol agent physically blocked him from seeing a woman on the maternity ward who had just given birth. The woman and her family had requested that she have counsel, Campos said. ICE said all laws and procedures were followed. In some jurisdictions, agents said their supervisors have allowed them to more frequently seek criminal warrants to arrest targets. Administrative warrants are typically used for illegal immigration, which is a civil, not a criminal, violation. Criminal warrants allow agents to break down doors and forcibly enter homes. Maksim Zaitsev, a 36-year-old Russian citizen with a pending asylum case, said he was beaten by ICE agents after calling for his wife when the agents arrested him during an immigration check-in at an ICE office. 'It was like I was in a washing machine,' Zaitsev said in an interview from a detention facility in Adelanto, Calif. Photographs in court filings show Zaitsev with bruises and scabs on his face. Zaitsev was charged for biting an officer, but a federal judge dismissed the assault case, citing government misconduct. Zaitsev said it was self-defense. 'We came to the United States for protection because of what we encountered in Russia,' he said. 'It seems that we are encountering here what we fled.' Videos shared on social media show plainclothes men, one masked, arresting people at a courthouse in Albemarle County, Va., without identifying themselves or their agency. That prompted James Hingeley, the county's elected commonwealth attorney, to launch an investigation. ICE said in a statement that the arrest was a lawful operation by its agency and bystanders who attempted to intervene would be prosecuted. Hingeley said arrests by officers who don't identify themselves pose a threat to the people being taken into custody, as well as to bystanders. 'If you operate as if you're a street gang,' he said, 'you create a danger to yourself and the public.' Read related topics: Donald Trump
