Markets slide again on concern Trump's tariffs are here to stay
Asian shares and US stock futures fell again on concern US president Donald Trump's tariffs are here to stay after his administration reiterated its resolve to keep the levies amid a legal tussle.
A gauge of Asian shares dipped 0.5 per cent, trimming its biggest monthly gain since November 2023, amid uncertainty about the legal status of Trump's planned tariff increases.
Sentiment towards equity markets also worsened after the Wall Street Journal reported the administration is considering a stopgap effort to impose levies on swaths of the global economy.
Hong Kong shares dropped after US treasury secretary Scott Bessent said trade talks with China were 'a bit stalled'.
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Japan's Nikkei saw the most pronounced selling, after experiencing the most pronounced buying on Thursday, with moves in the exporter-heavy index exacerbated by the ebb and flow in demand for the safe-haven yen.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington temporarily reinstated Trump's duties on Thursday while it considers the government's appeal.
On Wednesday, a little-known trade court had unanimously ruled Trump overstepped his authority, and tariffs were the jurisdiction of Congress not the president.
Either way, senior Trump administration officials said they were undeterred and expected either to prevail on appeal or to employ other powers to ensure the tariffs remain.
The Nikkei dropped 1.7 per cent in the Asian morning, putting it basically back at Wednesday's closing level.
The yen strengthened about 2 per cent from its low on Thursday to last change hands at around 143.48 per dollar. A stronger yen reduces the value of overseas revenues.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng sank 1.4 per cent and mainland China's blue chip index eased 0.3 per cent in early trading.
South Korea's KOSPI fell 0.5 per cent. MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was off 0.4 per cent.
'Trump's trade agenda remains alive and kicking, with the legal battle adding yet another layer of uncertainty,' said Rodrigo Catril, senior FX strategist at National Australia Bank.
'The only thing that looks more certain is more uncertainty,' which will lead to additional delays in investment decisions and hiring, he said.
US S&P 500 futures retreated 0.2 per cent. The cash index rose 0.4 per cent overnight, but that was largely the effect of resilient Nvidia financial results from after the market close on Wednesday, to which Asian shares already had a chance to react.
Pan-European Stoxx 50 futures edged 0.1 per cent lower.
The 10-year US Treasury yield was steady at 4.42 per cent on Friday, following a 5.5 basis point slide on Thursday.
Safe-haven gold was little changed at $3,311 per ounce, following a 0.8 per cent advance in the previous session. Risk-sensitive bitcoin slipped to a 10-day low of $104,714.35.
Both Brent and US West Texas Intermediate crude eased 0.3 per cent early on Friday, to $63.97 and $60.75 per barrel, respectively. – Reuters
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Irish Independent
3 hours ago
- Irish Independent
Bono tells Joe Rogan US global aid cuts have led to 300,000 deaths and reveals conversations with Marco Rubio
When Mr Trump took office earlier this year, DOGE, led by Mr Musk, was set up to cut wasteful spending in the US government. The Trump administration has moved to cut funding to government foreign aid agency USAID and other global initiatives, including the United States President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief (PEPFAR), which has saved more than 25 million lives since it was established in 2003. During an appearance on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast, Bono told host Joe Rogan of how the world's relationship with the US seems to be changing, and revealed he is in contact with US secretary of state Marco Rubio. 'I think America's more vulnerable now than it's ever been. It feels like America's fallen out of love with the rest of the world. I don't think the world wants to fall out of love with America,' he said He then cited a report estimating 300,000 people have already died as a result of cuts made to USAID funding and said food intended for foreign aid is being left to rot because the workers who had access to it have been fired. "There's food rotting in boats, in warehouses. There is - this will f**k you off - you will not be happy, no American will, but there is, I think it's 50,000 tonnes of food that are stored in Djibouti, South Africa, Dubai and - wait for it - Houston, Texas. "And that is rotting rather than going to Gaza, rather than going to Sudan, because the people who know the codes for the warehouse are fired, they're gone. What is that? That's not America, is it?" Mr Rogan agreed there "have been organisations that do tremendous good all throughout the world" but added there was "a money laundering operation" with no oversight that saw billions or trillions of dollars of US public money go missing. The levels of waste, abuse and fraud in the US government claimed by Mr Trump and Mr Musk have been disputed by fact checkers in the American and international media. Mr Musk has responded to the claims made by Bono in a post on his social media platform X: 'He's such a liar/idiot. Zero people have died!' he wrote. ADVERTISEMENT During his conversation with Mr Rogan, Bono said a Christian aid organisation working with malnourished children is being forced to 'choose which child to pull off the IVs' because of funding cuts. "It just seems to me like a kind of, I don't know if evil is a strong word, too strong a word, but what we know about pure evil is it rejoices in the deaths, the squandering of human life, particularly children's. "It actually rejoices in it and whether it's incompetence, whether it's unintended consequences, it's not too late for people.' Bono said he is contact with Mr Rubio, who does not agree people are dying as a result of cuts to funding. "I have conversations with Marco Rubio. He's convinced people aren't dying yet. I don't know who's telling him, or not telling him, rather. But his instincts are correct.' He said Mr Rubio used to wear an armband for the One Campaign, the organisation co-founded by Bono in 2004 for providing aid in Africa. "Americans, no matter what political colour, you seem them, just the size, they just grow in stature when they know they're being useful.'
Irish Times
4 hours ago
- Irish Times
Lee Jae-myung: The man set to take over South Korea's turbulent democracy
The crowd outside Seoul Children's Grand Park was a few hundred strong, many of them holding blue balloons and some with flags on flexible poles about 10 metres tall. The mood was buoyant, principally because their Democratic Party candidate, Lee Jae-myung (61), was more than 10 points ahead in the polls. He is on course to win South Korea's presidential election next Tuesday. Warm-up speakers reminded supporters that early voting was under way (more than 20 per cent of eligible voters had cast their ballots by Friday morning) and led chants of the candidate's name. Then local politicians dressed in the blue-and-white campaign uniform joined younger activists in a K pop-style dance to welcome Lee onstage. READ MORE Lee, who survived an assassination attempt last year, campaigns in a bulletproof vest and he spoke from a lectern behind three protective screens with personal protection officers on either side of him. Narrowly defeated by Yoon Suk Yeol of the conservative People Power Party in 2022, Lee's second tilt at the South Korean presidency has come two years ahead of schedule following Yoon's impeachment in April over his declaration of martial law last December . 'I never imagined that martial law would be declared in broad daylight for no apparent reason. I couldn't believe it,' Lee told the crowd at Seoul Children's Grand Park. 'This country, which is one of the world's top 10 economic powers and even called a cultural powerhouse, so that people all over the world sing Korean pop songs, watch Korean dramas, eat Korean food, and want to visit Korea ... would anyone believe that such a country would have a coup and become a military dictatorship where soldiers run the country?' Yoon Suk Yeol, then South Korean president, makes a televised briefing on December 3rd in which he declares martial law. Photograph: Ahn Young-joon/AP Yoon, frustrated by what he saw as illegitimate obstructionism by the Democratic Party's majority in the National Assembly, declared martial law in a televised announcement at 10.30pm on December 3rd. He suspended all political activity, put the media under state control and deployed hundreds of armed troops to the legislature in an attempt to prevent it from meeting. Crowds gathered at the National Assembly building to stop the military from occupying it and helped legislators to climb over barriers to go inside. By 4.30am, they voted by 190 votes to zero to overturn the martial law declaration. Six hours after he made it, Yoon revoked it. The legislature voted to impeach Yoon on December 14th and he was arrested a month later for abuse of power, prompting a riot by his supporters. Last month, the constitutional court unanimously confirmed Yoon's impeachment, opening the way to next week's presidential election. Lee has dismissed the conservative People Power Party's candidate Kim Moon Soo as 'Yoon's avatar', warning that his victory could see a return of the former president and those around him. Political scientist Kim Woo Sang said: 'The impact is that the framing of this presidential election is the one the Democratic Party is making, that we have to do away with the so-called treacherous and treasonous forces, and that they are the democrats which will turn the country around.' Kim Moon Soo, centre, the candidate for South Korea's People Power Party, arrives to cast his ballot during early voting for the presidential election on Thursday. Photograph: Jung Yeon-je/Getty A former adviser to Kim Dae-jung, the Democratic Party's most successful president of South Korea, Kim Woo Sang also served as a member of the National Assembly. But he is suspicious of Lee, whom the conservative People Power Party accuse of having dictatorial tendencies. 'If he becomes a dictator, he will be a dictator because he already has the legislature doing his bidding, constitutional or not. They say that he can do no wrong,' he said. 'So if he becomes president, he will push through Bills as he sees fit. He's already been blackmailing and threatening the judiciary, which was the only leftover of the so-called free system.' Born into poverty in a remote mountain village, Lee skipped secondary school to work in a factory where an industrial accident caused a permanent injury to his arm at the age of 13. He went back to school later, winning a scholarship to university to study law and going on to work as a human rights lawyer. A former mayor of Seongnam, a city of one million people and governor of Gyeonggi province, Lee has faced investigations for corruption, bribery and conflicts of interest. Last November, he was convicted of making false statements during the 2022 presidential election campaign, but the conviction was overturned by the Seoul high court in March. The supreme court overturned that decision on May 1st, sending the case back to the high court. His Democratic Party has floated a proposal to expand the supreme court from 14 justices to 30 or even 100, including non-lawyers. Lee has played down the proposal during the campaign, but reforming the judiciary is among the proposals in his party's official platform published this week. The platform also includes proposals for democratic control over the president's right to declare martial law and plans to punish those who supported Yoon's actions last December. Although Yoon's invocation of martial law was a shock to South Korea's democracy, his fall from grace is part of a pattern. Since the introduction of democracy in the late 1980s, almost every president has ended up being impeached or jailed. 'To all intents and purposes, it's a democracy. But its democracy has a particular characteristic where the emphasis is on the rule by the people as opposed to the rule by the institutions,' said Michael Breen, the author of The New Koreans, who has lived in Seoul for more than 40 years. 'There's a word called minshim, which means public sentiment, but in the Korean meaning it's something more visceral. It's like a collective emotional feeling. What happened when democracy came is that authoritarianism went out of the window and moving into its place was this idea of the voice of the people.' Protesters take part in a demonstration last December in Seoul against Yoon Suk Yeol, then president. Photograph: Ezra Acayan/Getty As a former correspondent for British and American newspapers, Breen has watched the same pattern unfold during each South Korean presidency. The president can only serve one five-year term in office and each one starts with a high approval rating. 'Then it goes down, down, down. And by the end, their own party's candidate to succeed them doesn't want their support it because it's just poison, he said. 'And what we've had added into that mix of that pattern now is impeachment. So when the Democratic Party won a majority last year in the assembly, they interpreted that as a message from the people. Their stated objective was to get rid of Yoon, and then he obliged by being a jerk.' Despite his legal problems, Lee may be protected from the threat of impeachment by the majority his Democratic Party commands in the national assembly and the lack of legislative elections for the next three years. So he has a good chance of implementing the policies he has campaigned on, including on foreign affairs and relations with North Korea . Yoon took a hard line towards Pyongyang, downgrading the institutional framework that is supposed to be preparing for reunification and focusing instead on bolstering South Korea's defence. He drew close to the United States and, more controversially, Japan and adopted a more confrontational approach to China and Russia . A woman in Seoul walks past a banner showing Lee Jae-myung, the presidential candidate for the Democratic Party, and Kim Moon Soo, the People Power Party's contender. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/Getty Lee has promised to reduce tensions on the Korean peninsula by restoring communication lines with Pyongyang, although he has acknowledged there is no immediate prospect of dialogue. This is because North Korea has formally abandoned its aspiration for unification and declared South Korea its enemy. Lee made clear this week that one motivation for his wish to renew engagement with North Korea is to ensure that Seoul is not cut out of talks if Donald Trump revives his negotiations with Kim Jong Un . Trump met the North Korean leader during his first term in the White House and they exchanged numerous letters, but denuclearisation talks ended in failure. 'The North Korean denuclearisation process has long since stalled. The North's nuclear and missile capabilities are growing stronger every day. We can no longer stand idly by,' he said. 'North Korea policy should not be a political tool. We should only think about how to achieve peace and unification.' Lee has also advocated a reset of South Korea's relationships with China and Russia, along with other Brics countries, a prospect that causes unease in some European capitals. He defended his approach this week as a pragmatic response to a shifting geopolitical landscape. 'China is South Korea's important trading partner and a key influence on the security of the Korean Peninsula. I would stabilise the relationship between China, which has reached its lowest point under the previous administration,' he said. 'US-Russia relations and the war in Ukraine are entering a new phase. I would treat our relations with Russia from a national interest-first perspective, contribute to the reconstruction of Ukraine and conduct pragmatic diplomacy for the security of Korea and our businesses.' Voters in Seoul queue to cast their ballots on Friday during early voting in the presidential election. Photograph: Anthony Wallace/Getty Trump has threatened to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Korean goods, although he has postponed its implementation for 90 days along with his 'reciprocal tariffs' on other countries. Reports from Washington suggest that his administration is also considering cuts to the US military presence in South Korea and demanding that Seoul pays more to keep them there. 'I would say if Trump pulls troops out and raises the tariffs like that, I think public opinion towards the US will certainly not be good,' Kim said. 'And then if Lee Jae-myung is president, he will use that to oppose the US, reorient and grow closer to China and Russia. I think that's how it's going to work out.' Breen is more sanguine and although he has his doubts about Lee's commitment to real political reform that could limit his powers as president he believes fears about a shift in foreign policy are overblown. 'I think he's a pragmatist. He's talked about the importance of the American relationship and it's the most important relationship,' he said. 'He might make an effort towards China, but he'll have to be careful not to be embarrassed by them because they will want something more than he's able to give. 'I think every country is having this problem now because of where Trump is going with tariffs and stuff. You've got to be on the right side of that in a very pragmatic way.'
Irish Times
5 hours ago
- Irish Times
Trump announces 50% steel tariffs and hails ‘blockbuster' deal with Japan
Donald Trump announced on Friday he was doubling foreign tariffs on steel imports to 50 per cent, as the US president celebrated a 'blockbuster' agreement for Japan-based Nippon Steel to invest in US Steel during a rally in Pennsylvania. Surrounded by men in orange hardhats at a US Steel plant in West Mifflin, Mr Trump unveiled the new levies, declaring that the dramatic rate increase would 'even further secure the steel industry in the United States'. 'Nobody is going to get around that,' Mr Trump said, of the tariff rate hike from what was 25 per cent. In a social media post after his remarks, Mr Trump announced that the 50 per cent tariffs on steel would also apply to imported aluminium and would take effect on June 4th. READ MORE 'This will be yet another BIG jolt of great news for our wonderful steel and aluminium workers,' he stated in the post. It was not immediately clear how the announcement would affect the trade deal negotiated earlier this month that saw tariffs on UK steel and aluminium reduced to zero. Mr Trump's Friday tariffs announcement came a day after a federal appeals court temporarily allowed his tariffs to remain in effect staying a decision by a US trade court that blocked the president from imposing the duties. The trade court ruling, however, does not impede the president's ability to unilaterally raise tariffs on steel imports, an authority granted under a national security provision called section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act. The precise relationship between Nippon Steel and US Steel raised questions on Friday, even for some of Mr Trump's allies. The president has thrown his full support behind the deal, months after insisting he was 'totally against' a $14.9 billion bid by Nippon Steel for its US rival. [ Ireland cannot base its economic strategy on the 'Taco' theory – Trump Always Chickens Out Opens in new window ] The United Steelworkers union had previously urged Mr Trump to reject Nippon's bid, dismissing the Japanese firm's commitments to invest in the US as 'flashy promises' and claiming it was 'simply seeking to undercut our domestic industry from the inside'. Speaking to steelworkers, Mr Trump said that US Steel would 'stay an American company' after what he is now calling 'a partnership' with Nippon. But US Steel's website links to a stand-alone site with the combined branding of the two companies that features a statement describing the transaction as 'US Steel's agreement to be acquired by NSC'. On the website touting the deal, there were also multiple references to 'Nippon Steel's acquisition of US Steel' and the 'potential sale of US Steel to Nippon Steel'. Even pro-Trump commentators on Fox expressed bafflement over the exact nature of the deal. 'This is being described as 'a partnership', this deal between Nippon and US Steel – but then it's described as an acquisition on the US Steel website,' Fox host Laura Ingraham pointed out on her Friday night show. [ Trump and the 'nasty' Taco trade Opens in new window ] She asked a guest from another pro-Trump outlet, Breitbart: 'Who owns the majority stake in this company?' When the guest said he did not know, Ms Ingraham suggested Mr Trump might not be aware of the details. 'I don't know if he was fully informed about the terms of the deal. We just don't know.' Mr Trump's predecessor, Joe Biden, had blocked Nippon's acquisition, citing national security concerns, during his final weeks in office. During his remarks at the rally, Mr Trump gloated that the Nippon investment would once again make the American steelmaker 'synonymous with greatness'. He said protections were included to 'ensure that all steel workers will keep their jobs and all facilities in the United States will remain open and thriving' and said Nippon had committed to maintaining all of US Steel's operating blast furnaces for the next decade. The president also promised that every US steelworker would soon receive a $5,000 bonus – prompting the crowd to start a round of 'U-S-A!' chants. Mr Trump told the steelworkers in attendance that there was 'a lot of money coming your way'. 'We won't be able to call this section a rust belt any more,' Trump said. 'It'll be a golden belt.' During the event, Mr Trump invited local members of United Steelworkers on to the stage to promote the Nippon deal, which saw its leader break with the union to support it. Praising the president, Jason Zugai, vice-president of Irvin local 2227, said he believed the investments would be 'life-changing'. But the powerful United Steelworkers union remained wary. 'Our primary concern remains with the impact that this merger of US Steel into a foreign competitor will have on national security, our members and the communities where we live and work,' United Steelworkers president David McCall said in a statement. 'Issuing press releases and making political speeches is easy. Binding commitments are hard.' Mr Trump framed the administration's drive to boost domestic steel production as 'not just a matter of dignity or prosperity or pride' but as 'above all, a matter of national security'. He blamed 'decades of Washington betrayals and incompetence and stupidity and corruption' for hollowing out the once-dominant US steel industry, as the jobs 'melted away, just like butter'. 'We don't want America's future to be built with shoddy steel from Shanghai. We want it built with the strength and the pride of Pittsburgh,' he said. In his remarks at a US steel plant, Mr Trump also repeated many of the false claims that have become a feature of his rallies including the lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him. He gloated over his 2024 victory and, gesturing toward his ear that was grazed by a would-be assassin's bullet last year at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, said it was proof that a higher power was watching over him. He also called on congressional Republicans to align behind his 'one big, beautiful bill,' urging attendees to lobby their representatives and senators to support the measure. – Guardian service
