Brazil Central Bank Ratchets Up Cautious Stance on US Tariffs
'The increase of trade tariffs by the US to Brazil has significant sectoral impacts and still uncertain aggregate effects that depend on the unfolding of the next steps in the negotiations and the perception of risk,' board members wrote in the minutes to their July 29-30 monetary policy meeting, when they held the benchmark Selic steady at 15%.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump plans to meet Putin next week in Ukraine peace bid
President Donald Trump said Wednesday he plans to meet with Vladimir Putin as soon as next week in a fresh bid to broker a peace deal with Ukraine after U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff held a 'highly productive' meeting with the Russian president. Trump hailed the meeting as having made 'great progress,' but he didn't elaborate. A Kremlin spokesman said the meeting lasted three hours and was 'useful and constructive.' 'Everyone agrees this war must come to a close, and we will work towards that in the days and weeks to come,' Trump posted on his social media site. 'President Trump wants this brutal war to end,' added White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt. Trump told European allies about his plans to meet with Putin and his hopes to broker a three-man meeting between the two of them and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, several American and European media outlets reported. A face-to-face meeting between Putin and Zelenskyy could amount to a crucial crossroads in the war that Putin launched against neighboring Ukraine more than three years ago. In announcing his plans, Trump didn't mention his looming Friday deadline for Putin to start talking peace with Kyiv, raising obvious questions about whether the threat is still hanging over the Kremlin. Trump last week set a stricter deadline of '10 or 12 days' for Putin to wind down the war against Ukraine or start peace negotiations, threatening 'severe tariffs' and other economic penalties against Russia and its economic partners if it refuses. Zelenskyy, who also spoke with Trump on Wednesday, said Putin's agreement to meet could suggest that pressure from Trump is working, though he warned that the wily Kremlin leader could be raising hopes for peace as a negotiating tactic without any intention of agreeing to end the conflict. 'The main thing is that they do not deceive us in the details,' Zelenskyy said in his nightly address to the Ukrainian people. Moscow had so far shrugged off Trump's deadline as empty bluster, noting he has given numerous previous ultimatums on various issues that turned out to be toothless threats. Russia believes it has the upper hand on the battlefield, at least in the short and medium term, giving it little reason to agree to even a brief ceasefire. Its troops have made modest advances along the long front line in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region and ousted Ukrainian troops from a sliver of a Russian border territory that they had previously seized. Russia has also increasingly mounted deadly missile and drone attacks on Ukrainian civilian targets. Earlier on Wednesday, Witkoff took a morning stroll in Moscow with Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian president's envoy for investment and economic cooperation, which was captured in footage aired by a Russian news agency. Dmitriev played a key role in three rounds of direct talks between delegations from Russia and Ukraine, as well as discussions between Russian and U.S. officials, but the negotiations made no progress on ending the three-year war. Trump has recently flip-flopped to a much harsher stance on Russia after seeing Putin for months spurn his demands for concessions. Still, Trump has shown himself to be unwilling to take a firm stance of defending Ukraine and sticking to it, giving Putin an incentive to wait out any threats. The new deadline and threat to impose 'secondary sanctions' on nations that buy Russian energy, like India, China and Turkey, are particularly problematic because those economic powerhouses have no control over Russia's stance on Ukraine. They're unlikely to cut economic ties with Moscow in response to such U.S. demands, especially when Trump himself was cozying up to Putin just a few weeks ago. The White House announced it is tacking on a new 25% tariff on products imported from India, raising the total tax to 50%, which suggests it doesn't consider Putin has met the deadline.
Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Trump says he could impose more tariffs on China, similar to India duties, over Russian oil
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. President Donald Trump on Wednesday said he could announce further tariffs on China similar to the 25% duties announced earlier on India over its purchases of Russian oil, depending on what happens. "Could happen," Trump told reporters, after saying he expected to announce more secondary sanctions aimed at pressuring Russia to end its war in Ukraine. He gave no further details. "It may happen ... I can't tell you yet," Trump said. "We did it with India. We're doing it probably with a couple of others. One of them could be China." Trump on Wednesday imposed an additional 25% tariff on Indian goods, on top of a 25% tariff announced previously, citing its continued purchases of Russian oil. The White House order did not mention China, which is another big purchaser of Russian oil. Last week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned China that it could also face new tariffs if it continued buying Russian oil.
Yahoo
7 minutes ago
- Yahoo
US ethane curbs will make contracting to China harder, Energy Transfer says
By Arathy Somasekhar HOUSTON (Reuters) -Recent U.S. restrictions on ethane exports to China will likely make it more difficult to contract with Chinese companies, even though they have already been lifted, U.S. exporter Energy Transfer said on Wednesday. The U.S. placed restrictions on shipping ethane - and a wide swathe of other exports - to China in late May and early June after accusing Beijing of slowing shipments of rare earths vital to automakers and other industries. The restrictions were rescinded last month, but they disrupted flows of ethane and caused significant delays to shipments. "That, you know, put a little bit of a black eye on us, on our industry, on our country...," Marshall McCrea, co-CEO of Energy Transfer, said in a post-earnings conference call. The company is one of the top U.S. exporters of ethane, a natural gas liquid. "We think it's going to be probably a little bit more difficult to contract with Chinese crackers, good or bad, we think that they're probably going to be a little bit more hesitant," McCrea added. About half of U.S. ethane, which is extracted from shale gas, heads to China where it is run through crackers to produce ethylene, a building block for plastics. Chinese petrochemical firms use ethane as a feedstock because it is cheaper than naphtha, while U.S. oil and gas producers need China to buy their natural gas liquids as domestic supply exceeds demand. Rival Enterprise Products Partners also warned last week that the export curbs compromised the U.S. brand for reliable supply and energy security. "These kind of actions rarely hurt the intended target and often backfire hurting our own industry more," said Jim Teague, CEO of Enterprise Products. Enterprise said at least one non-Chinese company that it was in discussions with about contracting ethane decided to contract naphtha instead. Energy Transfer reported a 11.5% decline in net income to $1.16 billion, or 32 cents per unit, in the three months ended June 30. Revenue of $19.24 billion came in well below estimates of about $22 billion, according to LSEG data. Sign in to access your portfolio
