China-US talks in London; Warner Bros Discovery to split in two
Ata mārie and welcome to your Tuesday recap of the top business and political stories making news around the world.
First up, multiple media outlets are providing updates on a new round of talks between economic superpowers the United States and China in London to resolve the trade war.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer represented US President Donald Trump.
The BBC said the delegation met with Chinese representatives, including Vice Premier He Lifeng at Lancaster House.
Chinese exports of rare earth minerals crucial for technology components, as well as China's access to US computer chips, were expected to be high on the agenda.
Last month, both countries scaled back their hefty reciprocal trade tariffs, but accused each other of breaching the deal.
Last week, Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping spoke by phone and agreed to resolve tariff disputes. Trump acknowledged the trade relationship with China had got 'a little off track'.
Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Al Jazeera reported that California filed legal action against the Trump administration over the deployment of National Guard troops in Los Angeles because of protests over immigration raids.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta accused Trump of trying to 'manufacture chaos and crisis' on the ground.
'Federalising the California National Guard is an abuse of the President's authority under the law – and not one we take lightly. We're asking a court to put a stop to the unlawful, unprecedented order.'
Meanwhile, business leaders walked back on fears of an economic recession in the US, which had originally increased after Trump's tariff announcement, CNBC reported.
In a new survey, fewer than 30% of chief executives predicted a mild or severe recession over the next six months, down from 46% in May, and 62% in April.
In financial news, OpenAI hit US$10 billion in annual recurring revenue, less than three years after launching its ChatGPT chatbot, CNBC reported.
OpenAI targeted US$125b revenue by 2029, according to sources. OpenAI said it supported 500 million weekly active users, while it had three million business users, up from two million in February.
Elsewhere, Bloomberg has an exclusive story that the investment banking arm of Barclays could cut more than 200 jobs to boost profitability.
Sources said staff within investment banking, global markets, and research could be affected by the cuts.
Meanwhile, media giant Warner Bros Discovery has decided to split its business in two publicly traded companies, the Guardian reported.
One company would be focused on streaming and studios, while the other would focus on the legacy television network businesses.
'The separation aims to provide each company with greater strategic flexibility and focus,' WBD said.
The corporate split was expected by mid-2026, CNN reported.
CNN is part of the Warner Bros Discovery stable.
Finally, technology company Apple unveiled a new operating system interface called Liquid Glass at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference, Bloomberg reported.
Executive Alan Dye said the product would operate across its products and described it as the broadest design update in the history of the company.
Meanwhile, Apple also confirmed plans to open its artificial intelligence models to outside developers. That would allow app creators to weave the technology into their own software.
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NZ Herald
an hour ago
- NZ Herald
Wreck with $35b of treasure ‘confirmed' as Spanish galleon, says researchers
Gold and silver coins, pearls and gems, claimed to be worth as much as $35 billion in current prices, were aboard the San Jose. Coins found on the wreck are under investigation in Colombia. Photo / ARC-DIMAR via Antiquity The ship's sinking dented the Spanish effort in the war, which ended with Britain gaining Gibraltar, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia. Academics in Colombia now claim to have confirmed that the wreck found in 2015 is the San Jose. Using underwater drones, they photographed cargo scattered on and around the wreckage. Analysis of the images found silver coins, minted in 1707 with the hallmarks of the mint at Lima, Peru, among the debris. Other finds included Chinese porcelain from the Kangxi period (1662-1722) and inscriptions on cannons that dated to 1665. The finds suggest the wreckage is of a ship that sank in the early 18th century. 'This body of evidence substantiates the identification of the wreck as the San Jose galleon, a hypothesis that has been put forward since its initial discovery in 2015,' the academics said. Analysis of images found silver coins among the wreckage. Photo / ARC-DIMAR via Antiquity. 'The finding of cobs [Spanish-American dollars] created in 1707 at the Lima Mint points to a vessel navigating the Tierra Firme route in the early 18th century. The San Jose Galleon is the only ship that matches these characteristics. 'This find presents a rare opportunity to explore an underwater archaeological site and deepen our understanding of colonial maritime trade and routes.' The analysis will likely deepen a battle over the legal ownership of the wreckage. Claims have been made by Colombia, Spain, Peru, indigenous communities in the area, descendants of miners who dug up the treasure, and Glocca Morra, the treasure-hunting firm, which says it found the wreck as far back as 1981. Glocca Morra's new owners, Sea Search Armada, insist that the galleon was found within a mile or two of the co-ordinates of its 1981 discovery. The company, which is claiming almost $18b, is also challenging a 2020 law that deemed everything on the ship was Colombian Government property. The researchers added: 'Coins are crucial artefacts for dating and understanding material culture, particularly in shipwreck contexts. 'Hand-struck, irregularly shaped coins – known as cobs in English and macuquinas in Spanish – served as the primary currency in the Americas for more than two centuries.' An 8-escudos cob of 1707, based on high-resolution in situ photographs from the 2022 archaeological campaign. Photo / Antiquity The findings follow previous carbon-dating analysis of the wreckage that indicated it was approximately 300 years old. The ship's cargo will not be recovered from the seafloor until the wreckage is 'fully characterised' using 'non-invasive surveys'. With the galleon lying several hundred metres below the surface, it is too deep for human exploration. The study is published in the journal Antiquity.
National Business Review
an hour ago
- National Business Review
US-China trade deal ‘done'; Musk says Trump comments went too far
Happy Thursday and welcome to your early morning wrap of the key business and political headlines from around the world. First up, a trade deal between the United States and China is 'done', according to US President Donald Trump. Reuters reports that negotiators from both sides have agreed on a framework to get a fragile trade truce back on track and remove Chinese export restrictions on rare earth minerals and other critical industry components. Trump took to social media to confirm the deal, which is subject to final approval from him and President Xi Jinping. "Full magnets, and any necessary rare earths, will be supplied, up front, by China,' he said on his social media platform Truth Social. 'Likewise, we will provide to China what was agreed to, including Chinese students using our colleges and universities (which has always been good with me!). We are getting a total of 55% tariffs, China is getting 10%." A White House official said the 55% represents the sum of the 10% baseline 'reciprocal' tariff Trump has imposed on most of its trading partners; 20% on all Chinese imports that followed Trump's accusation the country, along with Mexico and Canada, facilitates the flow of fentanyl to the US; and the pre-existing 25% levies on Chinese imports Trump imposed during his first time in the White House. Meanwhile, Wall Street's main indices were down overnight despite the preliminary trade truce and softer-than-expected inflation data. The main indices were between 0.15% and 0.6% lower. The decline comes after a week of consistent gains, with the S&P 500 rising in six of the last seven days. 'Inflation in May was lower than anticipated, suggesting the tariffs aren't having a large immediate impact because companies have been using existing inventories or slowly adjusting prices due to uncertain demand,' Goldman Sachs Asset Management global co-chief investment officer of multi-asset solutions Alexandra Wilson-Elizondo told CNBC. Donald Trump. In other global news, signs are emerging that the worst of the feud between Elon Musk and Donald Trump is over. According to the BBC, Musk posted on his social media platform X overnight that he regretted some of the posts he made about the president. 'They went too far.' The two were caught in a war of words last week after the Tesla owner stepped back from his White House role and called Trump's tax bill a 'disgusting abomination'. He also made comments claiming that Trump appears in unreleased government files relating to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In response, Trump said Musk had 'lost his mind' and threatened to cancel his government contracts, which are worth billions. But overnight Trump told the New York Post he was open to reconciliation and there were no 'hard feelings'. Elon Musk. To Gaza, where Al Jazeera reports that the Palestinian death toll has eclipsed 55,000 since the Hamas-led attack in late 2023 killed 1,195 Israelis and foreign nationals. At least 120 Palestinians have been killed and 474 injured in Israeli attacks across Gaza in the past 24 hours, according to the enclave's health ministry. Closer to home, The Australian is reporting that the Pentagon has launched a review into the Aukus partnership to ensure the agreement is aligned with Donald Trump's 'America First' agenda. In a statement to the newspaper, the Pentagon confirmed the review, noting that it was an initiative launched by the previous administration. Under the Aukus arrangement, the US has agreed to provide Australia with between three and five nuclear-powered submarines. But concerns have emerged over whether the US industrial base can meet the target of producing the required 2.33 Virginia-class submarines per year – the rate needed to replace the boats sold to Australia. Australia made the first $500m down payment to the US under the deal in February. The Virginia-class fast-attack submarine USS Minnesota arrives at HMAS Stirling, Western Australia in early 2025. (Source: Wikimedia Commons.) Finally, Brian Wilson, the frontman and co-founder of The Beach Boys, has died at the age of 82, according to the BBC. "We are heartbroken to announce that our beloved father Brian Wilson has passed away," his family said in a statement shared online. "We are at a loss for words right now.' Born in 1942 and raised in Hawthorne, California, Wilson formed a group along with his younger brothers Carl and Dennis, cousin Mike Love and friend Al Jardine. They went on to become one of the country's biggest rock bands, The Beach Boys. Music magazine Rolling Stone ranked them at 12 on the list of the '100 Greatest Artists of All Time'.
Scoop
an hour ago
- Scoop
On The Making Of King Donald
After decades of watching the US prop up dictatorships in Central America, South America and the Middle East, there's a certain irony in seeing authoritarian rule play out on the streets of Los Angeles. No doubt, Donald Trump's deployment of the National Guard - and the US Marines! - to quell what were (initially) peaceful protests against his harsh immigration policies has been deliberately provocative. That's the point. The enemy is whoever opposes him. As for the legal basis for the steps he has taken…Trump's actions appear to violate the terms of the 1807 Insurrection Act, the 1878 Posse Comitatus Act, and several sections of the US Code of federal laws. As you might expect, all of these legal mechanisms limit the ability of a US President to deploy US military forces on home soil, as a tool of civilian law enforcement. So far, the White House attitude to these legal guardrails has been…a contemptuous so what? No real surprise about that, either. Last year, the US Supreme Court decision in the Trump v US case - one of the worst rulings the Supreme Court has ever made - gave President Trump the powers of an absolute monarch, by exempting him from the laws that govern the conduct of every other American. When faced with Trump's attempt (a) to prevent the lawful handover of power to the winner of the 2020 election and (b) to hijack the US Constitution, the Court simply caved in: 'The former president is entitled to absolute immunity from criminal prosecution for actions within his 'conclusive and preclusive constitutional authority.'' Absolute immunity? Meaning : if President Trump calls his criminal actions 'official' then bingo, they become legal. You almost have to feel sorry for Richard Nixon. If only this same licence had been available to him, Nixon would have never had to resign over Watergate. In vain, Nixon argued in a subsequent TV interview with David Frost that 'When the President does it, that means its not illegal.' No one believed him. Yet last year, the Supreme Court conferred those powers on King Donald. No wonder he's using them now in Los Angeles, and elsewhere. In the face of the Trump v US precedent, the threats by California governor Gavin Newsom to sue the President over the deployment of the National Guard in California without reason or invitation, are bound to fail. Moreover, the 1807 Insurrection Act does give the President some limited ability to deploy the military, even without the consent of the state governor. During the civil rights era, presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy both used the Insurrection Act to justify their sending in of US troops to enforce the country's laws on the de-segregation of schools, despite fierce opposition from the governors of Alabama and Mississippi. It is not as if the Supreme Court stopped at Trump v US. Earlier this year, the Court further extended Trump's powers by granting him the interim authority to fire the heads of independent state agencies (eg the National Labour Relations Board) at will, until such time as lower courts rule on the matter, and until the issue has finally wound its way back up to the Supreme Court. That process will take years. Meanwhile, Trump has been handed unlimited power to fire his opponents in state agencies, and hire his minions in their place. Making the federal government's independent regulatory agencies bend to his will is part of Trump's plan to concentrate all of the effective executive power solely in the White House. In doing so, he will demolish the system of checks and balances that has under-pinned America's democratic political system since the country's inception. Trump's exercise of these powers also pose a threat to global economic stability. Thanks to the same interim authority granted to him by the Supreme Court, there is no legal barrier to stop Trump from firing Jerome Powell (the chair of the US Federal Reserve) without a reason, beyond Trump's desire to make US monetary policies serve his own short-term political interests. Here's why he might do it. As yet, Trump's tariffs have not fed through substantially into higher prices because many US firms are still burning through the inventories on their shelves. That means Powell can't cut interest rates until he sees the full extent of the inflationary spike when US firms like Walmart re-stock over summer, at tariff-inflated prices. Trump is not pleased about the delay, since he will (justifiably) cop the blame from angry consumers. Currently, the market turmoil that the firing of Powell would create seems to be the only thing that's staying Trump's hand. Thankfully….despite the abject complicity of the Supreme Court, not every part of the US legal system is currently bowing to Trump. The US Court of International Trade for instance, hears disputes over trade practices. In late April, as the Brennan Center has pointed out, a panel of three judges - appointed by Presidents Reagan, Obama, and Trump — ruled that most of Trump's tariffs are unlawful. As the Center's Michael Waldman has pointed out, the US Constitution clearly states that only Congress - not a President acting alone - can impose such tariffs : The International Emergency Economic Powers Act provides presidents lots of specific tools — just not this one.A few hours later, another federal judge reached a similar conclusion. However, an appeals court kept the tariffs in place, for now. Inevitably this issue too, will head on back to the US Supreme Court (yikes) for a definitive ruling. Point being, Trump's legal justification for what he is doing is pretty shaky - or would be - if the Supreme Court wasn't enabling Trump to over-ride so many of the precedents set over the past century or more. The three arms of the US political system - Congress, the Presidency and the Courts - are supposed to act as effective balances on each other, along with the legal precedents built on the foundation of the US Constitution. Trump is dismantling that entire system. Unwinding the US Constitution The unwinding of those core US traditions began with the rise of the 'originalists' on the Supreme Court. This legal school of thought - once marginal, and initially championed on the Supreme Court bench by Antonin Scalia - now dominates the reasoning of the six judges (out of nine) who comprise the Court's conservative majority. According to the originalists, judicial decisions need to be grounded in the text and history of the Constitution, as conservatively (or, as they would say, neutrally) interpreted. In practice, this approach has led to a highly selective originalist opposition to many of the laws and precedents ( e.g. the right to abortion enshrined in Roe v Wade, the right of the accused to be informed of their rights enshrined in Miranda v Arizona) that are not explicitly stated in black and white in 1792, in the text of the Constitution. A strict originalist reading would mean that so many modern rights (e.g. to contraception?) can be jettisoned as having been the alleged by-product of years of ad hoc judicial activism. In reality, the originalist justices - e.g. justice Samuel Alito - actively pick and choose what they see as being the founding fathers intention in the text, how they read subsequent history, and what roles for legal precedent they are willing to recognise. (Alito skated around the right to contraception in his Dobbs ruling that scrapped Roe v Wade by simply asserting that abortion is different. Uh, OK.) As even conservative commentators on the Court have pointed out, a division is emerging between the originalist hardliners (Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch) and the two conservative but more moderate judges (Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett). As for Chief Justice John Roberts…he has said publicly that he is not an originalist, although he often sides with the hardliners. It's a moot point, anyway. After all, it was Roberts who (a) opened the floodgates to corporates buying US elections by writing the 2010 Citizens United decision and who (b) took the leading role in the 2013 Shelly County v Holder decision that effectively gutted the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which had been the crowning legislative achievement of the American civil rights era. Those cases have been two of the most socially damaging decisions made by the Court in the modern era, right up there with the overturning of Roe vWade. My point being, the Roberts Supreme Court was already on its sick bed before the Trump era began, but the close and partisan links that Alito and Thomas (in particular) have with the Republican Party (and its major donors) have also severely compromised the Court's credibility. Alito has even flown an upside down flag (a symbol of support for the Jan 6 Capitol rioters) from the porch of his Virginia home. In the face of such partisan behaviour, it's probably naive to expect any kind of moral or legal consistency. Yet even so…how can judges who claim to be originalists wedded to the Founding Fathers' intentions, be so openly supportive of undermining America's system of checks and balances, by handing unbridled power to the Trump presidency? Having the country ruled by an American monarch was exactly what the founders of the American revolution fought so long and hard, against. Closer to home Jerome Powell has not been the only independent central banker to come under political pressure in recent months. The full story about the resignation of RBNZ governor Adrian Orr will probably never be known, but the driving force seems to have been the decision by Finance Minister Nicola Willis to cut the Reserve Bank's operational funding by 25% annually, over the next five year funding period. That reduction amounts to a loss of $50 million annually over that period, down from $200 million in the current financial year. The Bank's capital expenditure would also be restricted to $25.6 million. A raft of OIA-released emails this week has covered the period surrounding Orr's resignation. Having the politicians cut the operational spending of the 'independent' central bank by 25% and freezing it at that level for the next five years certainly looks like the actions of a government hellbent on dealing a significant blow to the bank's fabled independence. Yes, the Bank's operational spending and staffing levels had increased substantially since 2018 - although there is absolutely no reason to regard 2018 as being the gold standard on funding and hiring. True, the RBNZ board had undercut Orr's position by agreeing to swallow the funding cuts that Willis was seeking - but since Orr had been governor during the last few years of an expansion that he strongly endorsed, Willis (and his own board) had placed him in an untenable position. And so, he resigned. Not without a fight though, as the OIA emails indicate. Reportedly, Orr had offered to accept a 16.5% funding cut and lose 100 jobs at the bank. Elsewhere in the de-classified correspondence, Orr gave his reasons for holding the line against the extent of the further cuts being proposed: Orr…. linked a number of concepts which suggest how he came to a view about the funding level the bank of those was operational independence, which he strongly linked with sufficient funding. He said having sufficient funding is necessary for the bank to function effectively, meet its mandate, and maintain the operational independence required to make key decisions. He explicitly mentioned this independence is important for core central bank tasks, specifically monetary policy and prudential settings. So was this a resignation based on principle? Had Orr's exit been engineered in part at least, by a government intent on restricting the central bank's operational funding - and related ability to function independently - for the rest of this decade? We will probably never know. Yet interestingly, Radio New Zealand - which is no stranger to having downwards pressure put on its operational budget - treated the resignation rather differently. RNZ business editor Gyles Beckford for instance, chose to attribute the resignation to Orr's 'somewhat volatile personality' before adding that Orr 'basically, he threw his toys out of the cot.' Nothing to see here folks, move on. From Los Angeles, with love All praise to the late Brian Wilson, and this late-career release was one of his most delicate, intricate compositions and performances: Over the past week, L.A. musician Jessica Pratt and her band have performed in Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland. A reclusive presence on stage, Pratt's voice is so unusual and her music so well constructed that each element - percussion, sax, keyboards - took its turn on stage this week to add fresh colourings to songs that still remained subject to her own vision. From her most recent album, here's Pratt and her band on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, doing a live version of the single ' Life Is.' Note the 1960s 'Be My Baby' style drumbeats that kick the song into motion: While Pratt's music is always intense and personal, her live sets this week also had an airy, floating quality reminiscent of late 1960s Brazilian tropicália. Traces of that movement were already evident on this live track recorded by KEXP back in 2015:
