Airlines, planemakers oppose credit card fee crackdown that could imperil free flight offers
WASHINGTON, June 2 (Reuters) - Major airlines said Monday they oppose a new effort to advance legislation that would reduce fees charged by Visa (V.N), opens new tab and Mastercard (MA.N), opens new tab on transactions, saying the bill could force them to stop offering rewards credit cards that give consumers frequent flyer miles for making transactions.
American Airlines (AAL.O), opens new tab, United Airlines (UAL.O), opens new tab, Southwest Airlines (LUV.N), opens new tab and others including Boeing (BA.N), opens new tab, Airbus (AIR.PA), opens new taband GE Aerospace (GE.N), opens new tab, said in a letter to senators the legislation sponsored by Senators Dick Durbin and Roger Marshall could sharply reduce air travel and harm overall tourism.
Airlines generate billions of dollars annually in fees for branded credit cards. Durbin has called the airlines "basically credit card companies that own some planes."
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Reuters
39 minutes ago
- Reuters
Elon Musk's DOGE exit leaves leadership vacuum at unit
WASHINGTON, June 4 (Reuters) - The Department of Government Efficiency, the brainchild of Elon Musk that upended Washington with its rapid-fire drive to slash thousands of federal jobs and cut costs, is effectively leaderless now that the billionaire and his deputy have stepped down, U.S. lawmakers heard on Wednesday. U.S. President Donald Trump's budget chief, Russ Vought, told a congressional committee that efforts are under way to establish new leadership at DOGE, but its staff currently answer to Trump's cabinet secretaries. "The Cabinet agencies that are in charge of DOGE, the consultants that work for them are fundamentally in control of DOGE," Vought said. "We're in the midst of establishing the leadership on an ongoing basis." Vought's comments will only add to the uncertainty around the future of DOGE and its cost-cutting effort following Musk's announcement last week that he was ceasing work as a special government employee. A key lieutenant, Steve Davis, who was in charge of day-to-day running of DOGE, has also left. The White House has said that DOGE's mission will continue in the absence of Musk, who has since publicly broken with Trump over his sweeping tax cut and spending bill, calling it a "disgusting abomination." The rapidly receding power and influence of DOGE was almost unthinkable as recently as a few weeks ago when it dominated the political landscape in Washington with its aggressive push to fire a swath of government workers. Trump established DOGE to streamline what he says is a bloated and inefficient government. DOGE struggled to cut costs but was more successful in pushing thousands of workers to quit or take early retirement after threatening dismissal without benefits. It is unclear if DOGE and its cadre of young computer technicians will survive in Washington without Musk, especially as some members of Trump's cabinet have soured on DOGE's tactics.
The Guardian
44 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Trump's crypto firms spar with each other over rogue wallet announcement
A splashy website featuring an illustration of Donald Trump, looking buff and pumping his fist in the air, appeared online on Tuesday. The image is the logo of one of Trump's digital currencies, and the website claims to be the 'Official $Trump Wallet', hawking a product that would allow customers to buy and sell cryptocurrencies, primarily the president's own. The website prominently features the name of Trump's coin, $Trump, and invites people to join the waitlist to use the digital wallet. It was first noticed by the crypto newsletter Citation Needed. Magic Eden, an established cryptocurrency marketplace, said on the website that it had partnered with Trump's official digital coin team to create the wallet. The Twitter/X account for one of Trump's cryptocurrencies promoted the wallet product as well. 'The $TRUMP Wallet powered by @magiceden is coming soon. Join the $TRUMP community! reads a tweet from @TrumpMeme. With Billions of Trump fans around the world, the $TRUMP mission has always been to make it super easy for Trump supporters to get into crypto and join the $TRUMP community. The $TRUMP Wallet powered by @magiceden is coming soon. Join the $TRUMP community!… Though the announcements bear the markers of legitimacy and official involvement, Trump's sons have called foul. 'The Trump Organization has zero involvement with this wallet product,' Donald Trump Jr. quickly posted to the social media site X on Tuesday. Shortly after, Eric Trump posted: 'I run @Trump and I know nothing about this project!' Even Barron Trump chimed in saying: 'To be clear, our family has zero involvement with this wallet.' Trump Jr added that he'd been 'working tirelessly' on launching an official wallet with another of the family's crypto businesses, World Liberty Financial, which Trump and his sons created last year. The cryptocurrency industry is known for frauds, scams and infighting. The latest spat between Magic Eden and World Liberty Financial appears to stem from a conflict between Trump's sons and Bill Zanker, who is a longtime business partner of Trump. Zanker runs the business that issued $Trump, Fight Fight Fight LLC, which is separate from the Trump Organization and World Liberty. The Trump Organization also owns a firm called CIC Digital, which, along with Fight Fight Fight, oversees and profits from the trade of the cryptocurrency while owning 80% of the coin's reserves, on paper worth about $2bn. On X, Magic Eden and Zanker's company both said the crypto wallet announced on Tuesday was indeed affiliated with Trump and powered by Magic Eden. Eric Trump maintained this was wrong. Later on Tuesday, he issued a warning on X: 'This project is not authorized by @Trump,' he wrote. '@MagicEden I would be extremely careful using our name in a project that has not been approved and is unknown to anyone in our organization.' Sign up to TechScape A weekly dive in to how technology is shaping our lives after newsletter promotion Over the past several months, Trump's family and business partners have debuted a web of crypto business and digital currencies – those include a memecoin with the image of Trump pumping his fist, and a stablecoin that is designed to maintain a constant value of $1. Melania Trump even presented her own memecoin. In his first term, Trump was adamantly opposed to cryptocurrency, but has since had an about-face. He's embraced the volatile industry, becoming the first major candidate to accept donations in cryptocurrency, speaking at a major crypto conference on the campaign trail. Trump has hosted industry leaders at the White House, and wined and dined the top holders of his cryptocurrency at his private golf club outside Washington DC. Trump's administration has also named tech investor David Sacks his 'crypto czar', rolled back regulations on digital assets and halted a series of federal investigations into cryptocurrency firms. The White House, Magic Eden and Zanker did not return requests for comment.
Sky News
an hour ago
- Sky News
The big problem facing UK as deadline to finalise US trade deal looms
When push comes to shove, the question of whether British industry faces crippling tariffs on exports to the US or enjoys a unique opportunity to grow may come back to three seemingly random words: "melted and poured". To see why, let's begin by recapping where we are at present in the soap opera of US trade policy. Donald Trump has just doubled the extra tariffs charged on imports of steel and aluminium into the US from 25% to 50%. In essence, this would turn a painfully high tariff into something closer to an insurmountable economic wall (remember during the Cold War, the Iron Curtain equated to an effective tariff rate of just under 50%). Anyway, the good news for UK steel producers is that they have been spared the 50% rate and will, for the time being, only have to pay the 25% rate. But there is a sting in the tail: that stay of execution will only last until 9 July - on the basis of President Trump's most recent pronouncements. 1:00 For anyone following these events from the corner of their eyes, this might all sound a little odd. After all, didn't Sir Keir Starmer announce only a few weeks ago that British steel and aluminium makers would be able to enjoy not 25% but 0% tariffs with America, thanks to his bold new trade agreement with the US? Well, yes. But the prime minister wasn't being entirely clear about what that meant in practice. Because the reality is that every trade agreement works more or less as follows: politicians negotiate a "heads of terms" agreement - a vague set of principles and red lines. There then follows a period of horse-trading and negotiation to nail down the actual details and turn it into a black and white piece of law. In this case, when the PM and president made their big announcement 28 days ago, they had only agreed on the "heads of terms". The small print was yet to be completed. Right now, we are still in the horse-trading phase. Negotiators from the UK and the US are meeting routinely to try and nail down the small print. And that process is taking longer than many had expected. To see why, it's worth drilling a little bit into the details. The trade deal committed to allowing some cars to pass into the US at a 10% rate and to protecting some pharmaceutical trade, as well as allowing some steel and aluminium into the US at a zero tariff rate. When it comes to cars, there are some nuances about which kind of cars the deal covers. Something similar goes for pharmaceuticals. Things get even knottier when you drill into the detail on steel. 2:13 You see, one of the things the White House is nervous about is the prospect that Britain might become a kind of assembly point for steel from other countries around the world - that you could just ship some steel to Britain, get it pressed or rolled or worked over and then sent across to the US with those 0% tariffs. So the US negotiators are insisting that only steel that is "melted and poured" in the UK (in other words, smelted in a furnace) is covered by the trade deal. That's fine for some producers but not for others. One of Britain's biggest steel exporters is Tata Steel, which makes a lot of steel that gets turned into tin cans you find on American supermarket shelves (not to mention piping used by the oil trade). Up until recently, that steel was indeed "melted and poured" from the blast furnaces at Port Talbot. But Tata shut down those blast furnaces last year, intending to replace them with cleaner electric arc furnaces. And in the intervening period, it's importing raw steel instead from the Netherlands and India and then running it through its mills. Or consider the situation at British Steel. There in Scunthorpe they are melting and pouring the steel from iron made in their blast furnaces - but now ponder this. While the company has been semi-nationalised by the government, it is still technically a Chinese business, owned by Jingye. In other words, its steel might technically count as benefiting China - which is something the White House is even more sensitive about. 👉 Tap here to follow Politics at Jack and Anne's wherever you get your podcasts 👈 You see how this is all suddenly becoming a bit more complicated than it might at first have looked? This helps to explain why the negotiations are taking longer than expected. But this brings us to the big problem. The White House has indicated that Britain will only be spared that 50% tariff rate provided the trade deal is finalised by 9 July. That gives the negotiators another month and a bit. That might sound like a lot, but now consider that that would be one of the fastest announcement-to-completion rates ever achieved in any trade negotiations in modern history. There's no guarantee Britain will actually get this deal done in time for that deadline - though insiders tell me they think they could be able to finalise it in a piecemeal fashion: the cars one week, steel another, pharmaceuticals another. Either way, the heat is on. Just when you thought Britain was in the safe zone, it stands on the edge of jeopardy all over again.
