Rupee dips but firmer yuan, exporter dollar sales cushion losses
The rupee closed at 86.4075 per U.S. dollar, down slightly from its close at 86.3675 in the previous session but managing to hold above the 86.50 support level.
The offshore Chinese yuan rose to a near three-week high while the dollar index was a tad lower at 97.4.
Dollar sales from a large private bank and exporter activity also helped the rupee contain its losses on the day, alongside positive regional cues, a trader at a state-run bank said.
India's benchmark equity indexes, the BSE Sensex (.BSESN), opens new tab and Nifty 50 (.NSEI), opens new tab closed higher by about 0.6% each, tracking gains in global equities that were buoyed by hopes of easing trade tensions after a deal between the U.S. and Japan.
"Equity markets globally are rallying on the view that deals reduce uncertainty," ING said in a note.
U.S. President Donald Trump also announced a trade agreement with the Philippines, released terms of a previous deal with Indonesia on Tuesday and said that EU representatives were coming for trade negotiations on Wednesday.
Officials from China and the U.S. are also expected to meet next week to discuss an extension to the deadline for negotiating a trade deal.
For India, though, the prospects of a trade deal before the August 1 deadline have dimmed, with talks deadlocked over tariff cuts on key agricultural and dairy products.
Foreign portfolio outflows and the lack of an outcome on trade negotiations have maintained pressure on the rupee, said Dilip Parmar, a foreign exchange research analyst at HDFC Securities.
Parmar expects the rupee to decline towards 86.70 in the near-term.
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NBC News
16 minutes ago
- NBC News
From tech podcasts to policy: Trump's new AI plan leans heavily on Silicon Valley industry ideas
President Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled a sweeping new plan for America's 'global dominance' in artificial intelligence, proposing to cut back environmental regulations to speed up the construction of AI supercomputers while promoting the sale of U.S.-made AI technologies at home and abroad. The 'AI Action Plan' embraces many of the ideas voiced by tech industry lobbyists and the Silicon Valley investors who backed Trump's election campaign last year. 'America must once again be a country where innovators are rewarded with a green light, not strangled with red tape,' Trump said at an unveiling event that was co-hosted by the bipartisan Hill and Valley Forum and the 'All-In' podcast, a business and technology show hosted by four tech investors and entrepreneurs, which includes Trump's AI czar, David Sacks. The plan includes some familiar tech lobby pitches. That includes accelerating the sale of AI technology abroad and making it easier to construct the energy-hungry data center buildings that are needed to form and run AI products. It also includes some AI culture war preoccupations of the circle of venture capitalists who endorsed Trump last year. Trump signed three executive orders Wednesday to deliver on the plan. They seek to fast-track permitting of AI construction projects, expand U.S. tech exports and get rid of 'woke' in AI. Trump had given his tech advisers six months to come up with new AI policies after revoking President Joe Biden's signature AI guardrails on his first day in office. Trump's AI plan: global dominance, cutting regulations The plan prioritizes AI innovation and adoption, urging the removal of any barriers that could slow down adoption across industries and government. The nation's policy, Trump said, will be to do 'whatever it takes to lead the world in artificial intelligence.' Yet it also seeks to guide the industry's growth to address a longtime rallying point for the tech industry's loudest Trump backers: countering the liberal bias they see in AI chatbots such as ChatGPT or Google's Gemini. Trump's plan aims to block the government from contracting with tech companies unless they 'ensure that their systems are objective and free from top-down ideological bias.' The plan says the nation's leading AI models should protect free speech and be 'founded on American values,' though it doesn't define which values those should include. Sacks, a former PayPal executive and now Trump's top AI adviser, has been criticizing 'woke AI' for more than a year, fueled by Google's February 2024 rollout of an AI image generator. When asked to show an American Founding Father, it created pictures of Black, Asian, and Native American men. Google quickly fixed its tool, but the 'Black George Washington' moment remained a parable for the problem of AI's perceived political bias, taken up by X owner Elon Musk, venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, Vice President JD Vance and Republican lawmakers. Streamlining AI data center permits to speed up supercomputer construction Chief among the plan's goals is to speed up permitting and loosen environmental regulation to accelerate construction on new data centers and factories. It condemns 'radical climate dogma' and recommends lifting environmental restrictions, including clean air and water laws. Trump has previously paired AI's need for huge amounts of electricity with his own push to tap into U.S. energy sources, including gas, coal and nuclear. 'We will be adding at least as much electric capacity as China,' Trump said at the Wednesday event. 'Every company will be given the right to build their own power plant.' Many tech giants are already well on their way toward building new data centers in the U.S. and around the world. OpenAI announced this week that it has switched on the first phase of a massive data center complex in Abilene, Texas, part of an Oracle-backed project known as Stargate that Trump promoted earlier this year. Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and xAI also have major projects underway. The tech industry has pushed for easier permitting rules to get its computing facilities connected to power, but the AI building boom has also contributed to spiking demand for fossil fuel production, which contributes to global warming. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Tuesday called on the world's major tech firms to power data centers completely with renewables by 2030. The plan includes a strategy to disincentivize states from aggressively regulating AI technology, calling on federal agencies not to provide funding to states with burdensome regulations. 'We need one common sense federal standard that supersedes all states, supersedes everybody,' Trump said, 'so you don't end up in litigation with 43 states at one time.' Who benefits from Trump's AI action plan? There are sharp debates on how to regulate AI, even among the influential venture capitalists who have been debating it on their favorite medium: the podcast. While some Trump backers, particularly Andreessen, have advocated an 'accelerationist' approach that aims to speed up AI advancement with minimal regulation, Sacks has described himself as taking a middle road of techno-realism. 'Technology is going to happen. Trying to stop it is like ordering the tides to stop. If we don't do it, somebody else will,' Sacks said on the 'All-In' podcast. On Tuesday, more than 100 groups, including labor unions, parent groups, environmental justice organizations and privacy advocates, signed a resolution opposing Trump's embrace of industry-driven AI policy and calling for a 'People's AI Action Plan' that would 'deliver first and foremost for the American people.' J.B. Branch, Big Tech accountability advocate at the watchdog group Public Citizen, which signed the resolution, called the plan a 'sellout.' 'Under this plan, tech giants get sweetheart deals while everyday Americans will see their electricity bills rise to subsidize discounted power for massive AI data centers,' Branch said in a statement Wednesday. 'Americans deserve an AI future rooted in safety, fairness, and accountability — not a handout to billionaires.'
Reuters
16 minutes ago
- Reuters
Southwest Airlines earnings hit by weak US travel demand
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BBC News
44 minutes ago
- BBC News
How are trade deals actually negotiated?
Trade deals have never been more in the headlines, as Donald Trump continues to threaten countries with higher tariffs until they sign new agreements with the US. But how exactly are trade deals negotiated between nations, and has the US president's forceful actions changed how the talks are conducted?Former Canadian trade negotiator Jason Langrish says that Trump's tariff threats have undoubtedly worsened the tone inside the negotiating rooms."Lately, as we've gone into a nativist, nationalist phase, these trade deals have become more defensive and accusatory," he Langrish, who helped Canada sign trade deals with the EU and India, adds that this contrasts with how such agreements were previously reached. "Traditionally, trade talks were positive because you're taking an agreement that works between two countries and you're upgrading it."He points to the continuing trade talks between Canada and the US as an example of the change in atmosphere. Their two teams are currently working towards signing a new deal by a 1 August deadline."It's what we would call a defensive negotiation. Canada didn't ask for this, but it's something that we have no choice but to engage in." Another former trade negotiator, Karl Falkenberg, who represented the EU in talks for many years, says that Trump "doesn't recognise the rules of the game". Mr Falkenberg doesn't mean that as a complement, but Trump would surely take it as how exactly are trade talks conducted? What takes place in the rooms behind closed doors?"A chief negotiator is appointed on each side," says Mr Langrish. "Teams are put in place for each table, so there might be a table for tariffs, or regulation, and government procurement. Each of those tables would have its own sub-negotiator."Then he says, "it's off to the races", caveating that deals often take years to finalise. For Mr Falkenberg, a typical day in negotiations involves a morning and afternoon session, but he says he can "remember leaving the office at 5am in the morning"."If meeting the deadline is looking possible, people are prepared to sit through long hours - the longest I did was 24 hours," he TV political drama will often sensationalise conflict in negotiations, most in the business say that the real work happens quietly, over long hours of strategic give and take."Because, at the end of the day," says Mr Falkenberg, "as a negotiator you want to come to an outcome with someone else, so you need to build trust and connection". Wendy Cutler worked as a negotiator for the US Trade Representative's Office for 27 years. I ask her whether in that time, she was ever assigned a good or bad cop smiles and says: "I've played all the different roles, but I don't know which one I've been the most successful in."For Ms Cutler trust was her most important negotiation tool."You're not going to have 100% trust, because each side has their own national objectives in mind," she says. "But if you feel that you can informally share proposals with the other side, and that's not going to be leaked to the press, or get out to your stakeholders, it's easier to find a successful conclusion."But while the internal dynamics in the negotiating room do matter, what is happening in the world outside can often make or break a deal, says Mr Langrish. He points to those opposed to an agreement being made, such as a sector of the economy that may be negatively impacted, or domestic political opposition."It's not just the people who are for the advancement of the trade deal," he says. "There's also people and sectors that stand to lose and they have political clout as well. The political side is ultimately what slows things down." Ms Cutler adds that what must be making life difficult for US negotiating teams is the fact that Trump wants them to sign new deals with most countries in a very short window. She cites the April declaration by White House trade adviser Peter Navarro that the US would secure "90 deals in 90 days"."Trying to conclude 90 deals in 90 days has been a bridge too far even for Donald Trump," says Ms since April the US has announced agreements with the UK, Vietnam, Indonesia, Japan and the Philippines, as well as a partial agreement with China."I don't think from day one that the US government has had the appropriate bandwidth to deal with all the requests to meet and to negotiate with the whole range of countries," she advice to President Trump and his inner circle is to stop using social media. "Sometimes being too public in a negotiation can hurt progress in that it boxes both sides in and brings the tensions to the public, and therefore it's harder for each side to back down."In the meantime, as US tariffs seem to endlessly – and confusingly - go up and down, the world's trade lawyers are in hot trying to work out what they need to pay for their imports and exports are seeking them out and Mollie Sitkowski, a partner at US commercial law firm Faegre Drinker says: "This is the busiest I've ever been."
