Business news live: Bitcoin hits new high, interest rates cut hint and EU tariff threat
In the money markets, shares are expected to open lower on Monday for FTSE 100 firms, while bitcoin continues its record surge to hit new highs well above $120,000. Silver, gold and Brent Crude oil have also all been on the rise, but the pound has continued to drop against the dollar.
Additionally, we'll be watching out for any tariff -related retaliation as the EU steps up its offensive against the US with a $24bn tariff list ready to go into effect if the two cannot reach a trade deal.
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BBC News
28 minutes ago
- BBC News
Selling former Hambleton District Council offices is a 'win'
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The Independent
28 minutes ago
- The Independent
France's prime minister wants to cut 2 public holidays to save money for the indebted economy
France's prime minister proposed on Tuesday the elimination of two public holidays from the country's annual calendar — possibly Easter Monday and the day marking the Allied victory over the Nazis — to save money in next year's budget. That's among a raft of spending cuts laid out by Prime Minister Francois Bayrou in a sweeping, and potentially doomed, budget plan. He argued that removing two state holidays would bring in tax revenues generated from economic activity, contributing to around 44 billion euros ($51.3 billion) in overall savings. President Emmanuel Macron tasked Bayrou with crafting a budget that shaves costs to bring down France's staggering debt and deficit — while also adding billions in new defense spending to face what Macron says are resurgent threats from Russia and beyond. Bayrou questioned the religious importance of Easter Monday. And Victory Day, celebrated on May 8, comes in a month that has become a 'veritable Gruyere,' or holey cheese, of days off that includes May Day and the Catholic holiday of Ascension, he said. He said that those holidays were just suggestions, and that he was open to other ideas. France currently has 11 official holidays per year. With no parliamentary majority, Macron's centrist grouping must win support from adversaries on the left and right to pass the budget this fall. Bayrou's proposals, which are just a first step in the budget process, were quickly assailed by unions and the far-right National Rally, the largest single party in the lower house of Parliament. Bayrou's job is precarious, and he could be voted out if he fails to reach compromise on the budget.
Times
34 minutes ago
- Times
Europe needs faster economic growth, not an unnecessary trade war
Having been in Paris for a few days — not a state visit, although I did see some of the Bastille Day military parade — I thought it was time to write about Europe's economy. Judging by the crowds flocking to see an excellent exhibition by one of our most successful exporters, the artist David Hockney, the entente cordiale is in pretty good shape. Anyway, there are two reasons for writing about Europe's economy. The first is the euro and the eurozone economy, which continue to defy predictions of impending disaster. The second is to counter some high-profile nonsense about the wider European Union economy. It is little more than ten years since the euro went through the darkest hours in its short history: the eurozone crisis that almost resulted in 'Grexit', Greece's departure, with widespread predictions that Italy would also soon follow it out of the door. Marine Le Pen, leader of France's populist National Front, now called National Rally, then favoured 'Frexit' from the euro and the EU, although does not now. • EU has few cards with Donald Trump, and it's bad at playing them The euro survived, has been strong recently, and a few days ago it was announced that on January 1 next year it will add its 21st member, Bulgaria. Founded at the start of 1999 with 11 members — Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal and Spain — its most recent new member was Croatia two years ago. It joined other later members, namely Greece, Slovenia, Cyprus, Malta, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. It is an academic question now, but I was always strongly against the UK joining the euro, even though it was one of the hottest topics in British politics 20 years ago. The late Eddie George, Lord George, the former Bank of England governor, put it well when he said that we would have been the elephant in the rowing boat, risking capsizing both it and us. Our two previous flirtations with European currency arrangements, the 'snake' in the early 1970s and the European exchange rate mechanism (ERM) in the early 1990s, had both ended in disaster. For countries that joined and stuck with the euro, apart from convenience, membership has brought wider credibility benefits, lowering the cost of government borrowing. Against 10-year UK gilt yields approaching 4.6 per cent, their eurozone equivalents are in a range of 2.69 per cent (Germany) to 3.55 per cent (Italy). New eurozone members have bought into that credibility. Croatian 10-year government bond yields are around 3.15 per cent. Our government would love to be able to borrow that cheaply. • Strength of sterling offers holidaymakers alternatives to America The eurozone is always associated with slow growth and has recently been dragged down by very weak growth in Germany, although that may now be changing. Despite this, the eurozone has comfortably outgrown the UK since the EU referendum in 2016 and formal Brexit on January 31, 2020. It is on this growth point that a corrective is due. A few days ago, Jamie Dimon, chief executive of JP Morgan Chase, one of the most influential men in finance, was blunt, telling a conference in Dublin that the EU's gross domestic product had slumped from 90 per cent of US GDP to just 65 per cent in the past ten to 15 years. 'That's not a good sign. You are losing,' he said. While Dimon had some good points to make in his speech, highlighting the EU's lack of enough global-scale companies and the need to complete the EU's single market in services, particularly financial services, this was a schoolboy error. What he was describing was an exchange rate effect. Fifteen or so years ago, during and after the financial crisis, the euro was a lot stronger against the dollar, reaching a peak of nearly $1.60. Converting the EU's GDP, measured in euros, to dollars thus gave a high figure. The euro's subsequent drop against the dollar — it briefly fell below parity last year and is currently around $1.17 — thus explains most of the fall in EU GDP measured in dollar terms. • EU GDP driven by surge in Irish economy Fortunately, economists have a way of dealing with this obvious distortion, adjusting exchange rates for what is known as purchasing power parity, which takes into account different price levels. On this basis, according to World Bank data, the EU's GDP was 97 per cent of that of America in 2010 and 96 per cent last year. A better measure, GDP in purchasing power parity adjusted also for inflation, probably gives a fairer picture. Measured this way, the EU's GDP was slightly bigger than that of America through the 2010s but a crossover occurred in 2020, when the UK left. Last year, the EU's GDP was 95 per cent of that of the US. Although proper comparisons show the EU in a better light, this leaves no room for complacency. The EU's population is roughly 450 million, compared with 333 million for the US. EU per capita GDP, properly measured, is about 72 per cent of America's, with the UK slightly below the EU average. Within the EU, only Luxembourg and Ireland exceed US per capita GDP, each for special and somewhat distorted reasons, though Denmark and the Netherlands also come close. When it comes to growth, America has done well in recent years, pulling away during Joe Biden's presidency and the pandemic and Russia invasion, growing more than twice as fast as the eurozone and three times as fast as the UK since late 2019. Latest figures suggest that growth is just about holding up in the EU but it faces the potential wrecking ball of Donald Trump's 30 per cent tariffs and is threatening to retaliate, which would harm European consumers. There is no justification, of course, for Trump's tariffs. The EU's overall trade surplus with the US last year, taking account of goods and services, was a modest €50 billion (£43 billion), less than 3 per cent of bilateral trade. Markets think the US president's bark is worse than his bite and that recent experience suggests he will chicken out on tariffs. Political leaders cannot, however, rely on that. Europe needs faster growth, not a growth-sapping trade war. David Smith is Economics Editor of The Sunday Times
