Gold Futures Rise on Escalating Market Volatility, Safe-Haven Demand
0758 GMT – Gold futures rise on heightened geopolitical and macroeconomic risk that increases the precious metal's safe-haven appeal. Futures are up 1.9% at $3,378.0 a troy ounce. Gold is gaining as China pushes back on U.S. President Trump's accusation last week that it broke a temporary trade agreement, souring market hopes for a lasting resolution to the trade tensions. Trump has further threatened to double the current 25% tariffs on all steel and aluminum imports from Wednesday, further stoking market volatility. Meanwhile, geopolitical tensions were also ratcheted up over the weekend, as Ukraine launched drone attacks deep inside Russian territory. (joseph.hoppe@wsj.com)
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Politico
10 minutes ago
- Politico
Trump's high-speed silver lining
Presented by the Stop the Oil Shakedown Coalition. With help from Camille von Kaenel UNLIKELY ALLY: President Donald Trump is about to snatch $4 billion away from California's high-speed rail project — and all that's doing is reinforcing Democrats' iron-willed support for the beleaguered venture. The Trump administration said Wednesday — in the form of a 300-page report — that it's on the verge of nixing Biden-era grants for the planned rail line from Los Angeles to the Bay Area, a conclusion state officials have feared since the president put the project in his crosshairs in February. Rather than being a death knell for a project that's years behind schedule and has a price tag that's ballooned from $33 billion to as much as $128 billion, Trump's attacks are fortifying state Democrats who hold the purse strings to its largest funding source — cap-and-trade revenues. 'We've seen this coming and we're going to do everything we can to prevent it,' said Senate Budget Committee Chair Scott Wiener. 'Regardless of what happens here, we're committed to making this project a reality.' It's been a question just how much Democratic support the project would garner during negotiations to reauthorize the state's emissions trading system, as several lawmakers made it clear coming into session that high-speed rail isn't their priority amid finite climate funding. That uncertainty made its way into the Federal Railroad Administration's report, which, among other arguments, points to the lack of 'long-term stability of cap-and-trade proceeds' as a reason to cancel grants. But Trump's dual assaults on high-speed rail and cap-and-trade itself lit a fire under Gov. 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Politico
10 minutes ago
- Politico
Trump, Senate GOP grapple with the House's SALT math
Top Senate GOP tax writers are doubling down on their interest in scaling back the House's deal on the contentious state and local tax deduction, even as they emerged Wednesday from a meeting with President Donald Trump without an agreement on the politically sensitive issue. Speaking to reporters outside the White House, Senate Majority Leader John Thune said he and his colleagues 'start from a position that there really isn't a single Republican senator who cares much about the SALT issue.' Thune was reiterating a sentiment he shared in an exclusive interview the day before, where he indicated that the House's SALT deal — on which moderate Republicans from high-tax blue states conditioned their votes on the megabill in the House — would need to change in order to get the votes in the Senate. Back at the Capitol, Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) also told reporters Wednesday that because 'there's not a single [Republican] senator from New York or New Jersey or California,' there's not a lot of appetite 'to do $353 billion for states that, basically, the other states subsidize.' But Senate Republicans are also acknowledging that they want to be responsive to the House's own math challenges: If they change the hard-fought deal Speaker Mike Johnson cut with his members to cap the SALT deduction to $40,000, it could present a major vote count dilemma for the Louisiana Republican. 'We are sensitive to the fact that, you know, the speaker has pretty narrow margins, and there's only so much that he can do to keep his coalition together. At the same time it wouldn't surprise people that the Senate would like to improve on their handiwork,' Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) told reporters. This was something that came up during the meeting with Trump, with Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) recalling that while the president didn't directly tell lawmakers not to meddle with the House's SALT deal, he said, 'you do this, do we lose three votes here? If you do that, do you lose three votes here?'' Even Thune ultimately conceded, 'we understand that it's about 51 and 218,' referring to the numbers each chamber must meet in order to advance the megabill, 'so we will work with our House counterparts and with the White House.' Yet the tricky tax decision wasn't the focus of the White House meeting, according to Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas), who estimated that topic took up only three minutes of the conversation. Instead, Senate Republicans on the Finance Committee wanted to use their audience with Trump to push for their top priority in the massive domestic policy package: How to make the business tax cuts permanent, with Thune warning in an interview earlier this week that it was a red-line for several of his members. 'We're working through the options. We had a very constructive conversation about that. And our members will sit down and figure out the path forward. But there is a path forward,' Thune said after the White House meeting. The typically tight-lipped Crapo also cautioned that he wouldn't 'say anything is settled,' but hinted at the behind-the-scenes push by GOP senators to ensure it's in the final party-line tax and spending legislation. 'We're going to do permanence if I have anything to do with it,' Crapo reiterated. The meeting at the White House came as Senate Republicans have been ramping up their closed-door discussions in a race to get a bill through the chamber and to Trump's desk by their July 4 deadline. Trump in the meeting 'made a pitch' to senators about the importance of getting the bill done, according to Thune. Republicans are also up against the clock amid increasing public pressure from Elon Musk, a Trump ally with a huge megaphone who this week called the bill an 'abomination.' Musk's commentary came up briefly during the White House meeting with Trump, with Thune saying Trump made a 'passing reference' and Marshall suggesting the former DOGE chief was brought up as a joke. 'It was a conversation for 30 seconds,' Marshall said, adding that the comment 'was very much in jest, in laughing.' Mia McCarthy contributed to this report.
Bloomberg
15 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Senate GOP Plans to Boost CFPB Scrutiny, Cut Fed Employee Pay
The Senate Banking Committee is planning to eliminate all mandatory funding for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and restrict the pay of many Federal Reserve employees as part of the Senate's big tax and spending bill, according to a person familiar with the matter. The proposal, outlined in a committee memo, would require the CFPB to seek funding in the regular appropriations process rather than receive it from the Fed.
