Bitcoin drops as Trump calls for 50% tariff on European Union starting next month: CNBC Crypto World
On today's episode of CNBC Crypto World, bitcoin falls after President Donald Trump said he is 'recommending a straight 50% Tariff on the European Union' amid stalled trade negotiations. Plus, the president hosted a dinner for top holders of his meme coin as some Democrats raised ethics concerns. And, Kevin Lehtiniitty of Borderless.xyz reacts to the Senate advancing the GENIUS Act stablecoin regulation bill this week.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Bloomberg
12 minutes ago
- Bloomberg
Musk's Drug Use on Campaign Trail Generated Concern, Report Says
Elon Musk was using drugs more heavily than previously known while on the campaign trail to help elect Donald Trump president, worrying some people close to the mercurial billionaire, the New York Times reported. The chief executive officer of Tesla Inc. and SpaceX traveled with a medication box that held about 20 pills and was taking so much ketamine that it was affecting his bladder, according to the report, which cited private messages and interviews with people who know or work with Musk. He also took Ecstasy and psychedelic mushrooms on occasions, the New York Times said.
Forbes
12 minutes ago
- Forbes
Forbes Daily: Supreme Court Gives A Boost To Oil And Gas Billionaires
J.K. Rowling brought magic to multiple generations with her wizarding world—and it's made her a billionaire, again, despite plenty of recent controversy. The Harry Potter author is now worth $1.2 billion, according to Forbes estimates, after previously falling off the Billionaires List in 2012 as a result of charitable giving. That's in spite of the fact that Rowling has placed herself at the center of a culture war, frequently posting anti-transgender rhetoric on social media. Since 2020, she has earned more than $80 million per year from the sales of her books and the vast litany of Potterverse brand extensions. The staying power of the franchise is only set to continue, with a new HBO Max series adaptation of the books going into production this summer. President Donald Trump's 'Liberation Day' tariffs will stay in effect for now, a federal appeals court ruled, despite a Wednesday ruling from the Court of International Trade that they were unlawful, plus a second, similar ruling from a federal court Thursday. But if an appeals court or the Supreme Court, where the case is likely to end up, ultimately sides with the international court and says they're unlawful, the Trump Administration will have to refund any tariffs collected. MORE: Nvidia briefly became the world's most valuable company again Thursday after its latest earnings report, surpassing Microsoft, before falling back into No. 2. The AI chip giant's stock surged post-earnings and after the international trade court's tariff ruling, helping lift the broader market, before indexes ended the day at more modest gains. Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said trade talks between China and the U.S. have stalled and a direct call between the two countries' presidents may be needed to close a deal, leading U.S. stock futures to drop slightly in early trading on Friday. After their meeting in Geneva earlier this month, U.S. and Chinese officials announced they would significantly cut back tariffs placed on each other's goods for at least 90 days, while both sides work on a trade agreement. Despite President Trump repeatedly attacking Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, the pair met Thursday at Trump's request—Powell's first meeting with a sitting president since May 2022. Trump has expressed frustration with the Fed's hesitation to lower interest rates, but Powell was insistent that the Fed would determine monetary policy based on economic data, according to a statement from the central bank. The SEC dropped a lawsuit against Binance on Thursday, days after the crypto exchange began listing a stablecoin created by World Liberty Financial, one of President Donald Trump's blockchain ventures. Binance admitted in a November 2023 plea deal to anti-money laundering and sanctions violations, agreeing to pay $4 billion, and it's not the only Trump crypto partner to have benefited personally from his administration. The Supreme Court gave a boost to oil and gas companies as it sided Thursday with a railway company that argued an environmental review of a planned construction project in Utah was too broad. Dozens of energy billionaires stand to benefit, like Anschutz Exploration Corporation leader Philip Anschutz and Energy Transfer LP founders Kelcy Warren and Ray Davis, who are worth $16.9 billion, $7.2 billion and $3.7 billion, respectively. As AI chatbots become more trusted with high-stakes jobs like helping to diagnose medical patients or screening loan applications, they're also making more mistakes,—which means assessing a model's performance is more crucial than ever. The once-buzzy data-labeling startup Snorkel AI is shifting gears to help enterprises create evaluation systems and datasets to test their AI models, raising $100 million at a $1.3 billion valuation. Despite repeated promises of an imminent launch, President Donald Trump's Gold Card visa—which would give wealthy investors U.S. residency and an expedited path to citizenship—would require Congress to change immigration laws, a process that could take months or years. And furthermore, while Trump has suggested the administration could raise trillions selling the cards, the math just doesn't add up, according to one expert: To afford the visa, someone would have to be worth over $100 million, and there are fewer than 30,000 centimillionaires in the entire world, more than a third of whom are American. A federal judge will indefinitely block the Trump Administration's ban on Harvard University's enrollment of foreign students, amid the ongoing feud between the university and federal government. In a shift from the Department of Homeland Security's initial announcement, which stated the ban would take effect immediately, the administration told Harvard ahead of the court hearing that it had 30 days to show why the school should not be barred from enrolling international students. Real Madrid forward Vinícius Forbes' latest ranking of the World's Most Valuable Soccer Teams, Spain's Real Madrid once again takes the crown, worth an estimated $6.75 billion after becoming the first soccer team to cross $1 billion in annual revenue during the 2023-24 season. Together, the 30 most valuable soccer teams are worth more than $72 billion, or an average of $2.4 billion, up 5% from last year. Michigan Potash & Salt founder Ted Pagano jamel toppin for forbes Michigan is sitting on a motherlode of potash, a mineral which is the main ingredient in agricultural fertilizer. The U.S. uses 5.3 million tons annually and imports 95% of it, mostly from Canada. Ted Pagano's Michigan Potash & Salt Company is on the cusp of closing on $1.8 billion of financing for a new mine, including a $1.3 billion loan from the Department of Energy and $500 million in equity being arranged by JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs. If all goes well, the mine will be churning out 1 million tons per year of potash (worth $350 million) and 1.3 million tons of salt (worth $80 million) by the end of the decade. With a resource base proven to be 130 million tons, the company could keep that up for a century or more—and make Pagano, who owns 65%, very rich. Even now his stake is worth at least $300 million. To extract the potash, Pagano will use a form of 'in-situ,' or solution mining. He'll drill 8,000-foot-deep wells in pairs. One is the injection well, down which Michigan Potash will send hot water to dissolve potash and salt in place. The second is the production well; the solution travels up that well to the processing plant for separation and drying. The water is reclaimed, heated and sent back down the hole. From the surface the mine will hardly be noticeable and should be eligible for green tax credits. 'There's no hair on this project that we're ashamed of,' says chief operating officer Aric Glasser. In all, Forbes estimates that costs should come to about $140 per ton; potash sells for about $350 a ton today. And agricultural giant ADM has already agreed to buy nearly all of Pagano's yearly potash production. WHY IT MATTERS 'This story shows how even in a giant, oligopoly-controlled industry like fertilizer, an individual entrepreneur like Ted Pagano—in the right place at the right time—can generate huge value for himself and for the country,' says Forbes senior editor Christopher Helman. 'This matters now because there are many other critical minerals of which the U.S. needs to develop secure domestic supplies. Hopefully Pagano's story can inspire more entrepreneurs to take on the challenge.' MORE The $800 Million Rare Earths Portfolio Of Australia's Richest Woman References to DEI in the corporate reports of top companies took a sharp dive this year, according to analysis by Gravity Research. As President Donald Trump has waged a war on DEI, many companies have dropped or reframed their diversity initiatives: 72%: The drop in references to diversity, including 'DEI' and 'racial diversity,' in the reports of major corporations between 2024 and 2025, per the study 87%: The increase in usage of the word 'belonging' between 2023 and 2024 as a 'safer' alternative to DEI, though mentions of the word then declined 47% between 2024 and 2025 'Speaks volumes to the current political environment': said Joanna Piacenza, vice president of thought leadership at Gravity Research No matter the reason, if you were seeking a promotion that didn't pan out, you can still create your own opportunities for leadership development in your current role. Look at previous performance reviews to figure out what skills you need to work on, and collaborate with your manager to restructure your role for stretch assignments. And if you're looking for an opportunity to manage people, start by managing a project or asking your boss if you can take something off their plate. Scientists have created a 'smart' dental floss that doesn't just clean your teeth, but also gauges what about your health? A. Blood pressure B. Presence of cavities C. Stress levels D. Recent drug use Check your answer. Thanks for reading! This edition of Forbes Daily was edited by Sarah Whitmire and Chris Dobstaff.
Yahoo
17 minutes ago
- Yahoo
A New Working-Class GOP? If 'Working-Class' Means $4.3 Million a Year!
So much for a new, 'populist' Republican Party. So much for the GOP as a brave band of fiscally prudent, anti-deficit hawks. The 'Big, Beautiful Bill' is a declaration of intellectual bankruptcy, policy incoherence, and political vacuousness. That's its formal name, by the way, and you've already admitted a problem when you have to sell something that hard. It's no wonder that the only way the BBB passed the House was for one opponent to vote 'present' and for two others to miss the vote. One of the absent members fell asleep and missed the vote, an entirely appropriate response to an exercise in philosophical exhaustion. Defending the bill requires twisting facts into the 'alternative' variety and turning the plain meaning of words upside down. For example: The right wingers who demanded more cuts in programs for low-income people are regularly described as 'deficit hawks.' But even if they had gotten all the changes they sought, the bill would have massively increased the deficit. And most of them voted for a final product that will add close to $4 trillion to the nation's indebtedness. If these guys are hawks, I don't know what a dove looks like. Trump and his backers continue to insist that they are building a new working-class Republican coalition. But the astonishing thing about this bill is not only that it lavishes tax cuts on the very well-off; it also takes money away from Americans earning less than $51,000 a year once its cuts in Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, SNAP, and student loans are counted for. Republicans who rail against 'income redistribution' are doing an awful lot of redistribution themselves—to those who already have lots of money. The Penn Wharton budget model of the near-final version of the bill found that Americans earning less than $17,000 would lose $1,035 under its terms. Those earning between $17,000 and $50,999 would lose $705. But the small number of our fellow citizens who earn more than $4.3 million a year have a lot to cheer about: They pick up $389,280 annually. Please explain to me again why this is a 'populist' Republican Party. It's imperative not to miss what's obvious about this bill—that it ravages lower-income people to benefit the very privileged—and for progressives and Democrats to act on this. But it's also essential to notice what doesn't get enough attention: that so much of the commentary about how Trump has reinvented the GOP with a fresh set of ideas and commitments is poppycock. Trumpism is certainly dangerous and authoritarian in new ways. It is, well, innovative when it comes to a vast and unconstitutional expansion of presidential power. But it's also an ideological mess riddled with contradictions. When you look below the hood, it's primarily about the interests of people who can buy their way into Trump's golf clubs and private pay-for-play dinners—and, especially, about the enrichment of Trump and his family. On the phony populism side, Democrats in the House did a generally good job of highlighting the costs of provisions in the bill that hurt so many of Trump's voters, particularly the cuts in Medicaid and nutrition assistance, or SNAP. Senate Democrats have already ramped up similar efforts as that body's Republican leaders prepare to grapple with the steaming pile of incongruities the House has sent their way. You can tell that Republicans know how unpopular the Medicaid cuts in the bill are because they delayed their effectiveness date to minimize their electoral effect, repeatedly denied they are cutting Medicaid—and don't want to talk at all about how slashing subsidies within the Affordable Care Act would take health coverage away from millions more Americans. They are hiding the Medicaid cuts behind 'work requirements' that are really bureaucratic paperwork requirements that would make it much harder for people with every right to coverage to access it. They would make it more difficult for others to maintain continuous coverage. And if these rules were not about 'cutting' Medicaid, the GOP couldn't claim to be 'cutting' roughly $700 billion in Medicaid spending. But the GOP thinks it has a winner in its work argument. It's a tired but tested replay of a very old (and, yes, offensive) trope about alleged grifters among supposedly 'lazy' poor people. House Speaker Mike Johnson offered a remarkable version of this defense of the 'work' provisions: He said they were aimed at 'the young men who need to be out working instead of playing video games all day.' If ever there was a quote that should go viral, this is it. Young men, after all, shifted toward the Republicans in 2024. They should know what the party many of them voted for thinks of them. More important, progressives need to take the work argument on directly, not only by showing that the work provisions aren't really about work but also by offering amendments replacing the Medicaid cuts with provisions that actually would expand the availability of well-paying opportunities for greater self-sufficiency. Restoring the clean energy tax credits are important not only to battling climate change; they're also about preserving and creating well-paying jobs. A package of proposals on affordable housing, job training, and access to community colleges, particularly in economically depressed areas, would make a nice contrast to those who deny that government has the capacity to improve lives. What the Financial Times' economics columnist Martin Wolf nicely termed 'pluto-populism' when the GOP passed the 2017 tax cuts that this bill extends is alive and well. That populist rhetoric is being married to plutocratic policies is still not recognized widely enough. This is certainly a commentary on the rightward tilt of the media system the editor of this magazine has called out. But it also reflects a failure of Democrats to take the argument to the heart of Trump's base. It's political common sense that parties focus most of their energy on swing states and swing districts. Yet there will be no breaking the 50-50 deadlock in our politics without a concerted effort to change the minds of voters who have drifted to Trump out of frustration with their own economic circumstances and the condition of their regions. The fight over Medicaid and SNAP cuts directly implicates these voters and these places. And these voters pay more attention to these issues than either the Republicans who take them for granted or Democrats who have given up on them believe. When Andy Beshear won his first race for governor of Kentucky in 2019, he not only mobilized Democrats in urban areas; he also flipped many rural counties and cut the Republicans' margins in others. Typical was Carter County in eastern Kentucky. The county went for Beshear even though it had backed his GOP opponent and then-incumbent Republican Governor Matt Bevin four years earlier and gave Trump 73.8 percent of its ballots in 2016. Breathitt County in Appalachia also flipped, having gone for Bevin and voted 69.6 percent for Trump. Fred Cowan, a former Kentucky attorney general and a shrewd student of his state's politics, told me then that these voters understood where their interests lay. 'In a lot of these counties, the school systems or the hospitals—or both—are the biggest employers,' he said 'The Medicaid expansion helped a lot of people over there.' Sure, it's easier for Democrats like Beshear with strong local profiles to make their case. But the national party needs to learn from these politicians that giving up on whole swaths of voters is both an electoral and moral mistake. The emptiness of Republican populism speaks to the larger problem of mistaking Trump's ability to create a somewhat new electoral coalition with intellectual and policy innovation. Some conservative commentators are honest enough to admit how the BBB demonstrates that the 'old Republican Party is still powerful, the old ideas are still dominant,' as Ross Douthat observed in The New York Times. But even Douthat wants to cast the bill as an exception to a bolder transformation the president has engineered, particularly around immigration and a 'Trumpian culture war.' The problem here is that none of this is new, either. The GOP was moving right on immigration well before Trump—when, for example, it killed George W. Bush's immigration bill in 2007 as right-wing media cheered it on. The culture war and the battle against universities are old hat too. The real innovator here was the late Irving Kristol, whose columns in the 1970s introduced Wall Street Journal readers to the dangers posed to business interests by 'the new class' of Hollywood, media, and university types, along with activist lawyers. True, Trump is taking this fight to extreme places Kristol would never have gone. But, again, there's no new thinking here. And the attack on trans rights is just the latest front in the LGBTQ+ debates, now that the right has had to abandon its opposition to same-sex marriage because Americans have come to support it overwhelmingly. Even the contradictions aren't new. Since the Reagan years, Republicans have always talked about the dangers of deficits when Democrats were in power but cast those worries aside when they had the power to cut taxes. 'Reagan proved deficits don't matter' is the canonical Dick Cheney quote from 2002 when he was pushing for more tax cuts in W.'s administration. The exception proves the rule: George H.W. Bush made a deal with Democrats in 1991 that included tax increases because he really did care about deficits—and conservatives never forgave him for it. In an odd way, you have to admire Cheney's candor: At least he admitted what he was doing. The Freedom Caucus members have the gall to yell at the top of their lungs about how they care so very much about the debt—and then vote in overwhelming numbers to pile on billions more. As the debate over the BBB moves to the Senate, the immediate imperative is to expose the damage the bill does to millions of Trump's voters to benefit his Mar-a-Lago and crypto-wealthy friends. But it's also an occasion to shatter the illusion that Trump is some sort of brilliant policy innovator. Extremism and authoritarianism are not new ideas, and his legislative program would be familiar to Calvin Coolidge.
