Latest news with #GregValliere
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
US & China have 'a long way to go' before making a permanent deal
US stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) rally after the US and China agreed to a 90-day tariff cooldown. AGF Investments chief US policy strategist, Greg Valliere, joins Morning Brief with Madison Mills and Brad Smith to explain that despite the optimism on Wall Street, a permanent US–China trade deal may be far away. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here. The US-China trade truce. Treasury Secretary Scott Benson and US trade representative Jameson Greer confirming this morning, the US and China will both pause reciprocal tariffs for 90 days. US will now tariff China at 30%, while China will tariff US imports at 10%. Secretary Benson saying negotiations will attempt to balance the trade deficit. Neither side wants a decoupling. We do want trade, we want more balanced trade, and I think that both sides are committed to achieving that. Uh we would like to see uh China open to more US goods. Joining us now with more on trade is Greg Valliere, AGF investments chief US policy strategist. Greg, great to speak with you. We got a lot to get to in a short amount of time here. This 90-day pause, where are the tariff rates heading from here? Is the lower tariff rate we're talking about this morning, that 30% and 10%, a floor or ceiling? It could go a little bit higher. Uh we're we're in now Madison for another 90 days of this room a rumor every day, a leak every day, uh fighting back and forth. I'm happy to see this agreement and I'm happy to see the markets up, but I think we still have a long way to go before there's a deal. Greg, they say the devil is in the details and previously, as we think about what the phase one of 2019-2020 trade deal looked like, it was $200 billion over two years that was anticipated and targeting manufactured goods, agricultural products, energy products, services. How much do you think a deal that may come forward between the US and China will look similar to that or are some of the categories dramatically shifted and what needs to be addressed here? Hard to say. Uh I think it'll probably look a lot like the earlier deal. Uh we're arguing over the numbers as you say, the the devil is in the details. So I I do think that in the in the world of trade negotiations, 90 days is not a long period of time. So with that in mind, will they come to a a long much ranging, a wide-ranging perhaps conclusion after those 90 days here, or do you think there are going to be different phases of trying to get a deal done? Probably phases. I mean, there's a lot that has been left unsaid. Maybe we'll hear more in the next 24 hours, but what does this mean for Canada? And what does this mean for Western Europe? I mean, there are still a lot of angles to this story that have not been played out. And we have another big crisis that's starting to loom, and that's the decreasing prospects for getting a tax bill. Greg, that's exactly where I wanted to go with you because we know that the tariffs are supposed to raise 600 billion in revenue to feed through to 600 billion in tax cuts. If we continue to get headlines of these tariff deals and negotiations, does that negate any chance of those tax cuts coming in? How are you thinking about that? The prospects for a tax bill have dropped dramatically. Uh I think that uh Republicans were astonished and angry over the weekend when Donald Trump leaked out that he wants a tax increase on the wealthy. That's not Republican ideology. And I think you've got that, you've got a lack of agreement on how much spending to cut, how much Medicaid spending to reduce. So the tax debate is going to gobble up an awful lot of time in these next 90 days. Do you think especially knowing how some of what Trump in the first quarter essentially of his Trump 2.0 administration has really rattled some of the people who were closest to him as well along the way, whether they be CEOs that were really pushing for him and because they could anticipate perhaps to a certain extent, or at least they believed so, what a Trump 2.0 would look like. And now the the deck is kind of totally shifted here. So how does that change some of the calculus from the administration's relationship with corporate America and some of the largest executives that are trying to have the ear of the president for their companies? It's a good question. I I do think though that there's a positive angle, and that is that uh the the markets prevailed. Uh he Trump had to capitulate to the markets. He had to capitulate to big business. He had to capitulate to a lot of members of the House and Senate. The fact that they are now going to act as a moderating influence on Trump is not a bad story. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
US & China have 'a long way to go' before making a permanent deal
US stocks (^DJI, ^GSPC, ^IXIC) rally after the US and China agreed to a 90-day tariff cooldown. AGF Investments chief US policy strategist, Greg Valliere, joins Morning Brief with Madison Mills and Brad Smith to explain that despite the optimism on Wall Street, a permanent US–China trade deal may be far away. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Morning Brief here. Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
24-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
President Trump is an apparent no on a long-shot effort to let taxes increase on the rich
President Trump now appears to be a no on nascent GOP plans to consider letting tax cuts on some of the richest Americans expire. "I think it would be very disruptive because a lot of the millionaires would leave the country," Trump told reporters Wednesday after being asked about the idea for a "millionaire tax." "That would be bad," he added. There is little evidence to support Trump's claim, as the proposal would simply return rates for these taxpayers to pre-2017 levels and top income rates in other nations are often much higher. But it's a clear political signal that pushback from wealthy GOP donors and other Americans has put an already long-shot GOP idea even further on the ropes. "Well, that didn't last long," wrote Greg Valliere of AGF Investments in a note to clients Thursday morning, noting that the move is part of "a furious GOP battle over what will be in the tax bill — or bills — that will start to come into focus in May." At issue is the current top tax rate of 37% for individuals earning more than about $640,000 a year — which was set in the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. That rate is set to expire at the end of this year and would bump things back up to the 39.6% rate if no action is taken. One idea is to let that expiration happen. Another idea under debate is for Congress to create a new tax bracket — perhaps for over $1 million in annual income — that would see a higher rate. "It remains my base case expectation that a new higher tax bracket for millionaires will not be a part of a final bill," Henrietta Treyz of Veda Partners noted to Yahoo Finance Thursday morning after Trump's comments. She added that the idea remains under debate on Capitol Hill largely because losing that revenue "puts other issues in the cross hairs." Yet the latest comment from Trump comes amid a debate where many observers were surprised to see the GOP even discussing such a break from their tax-cutting orthodoxy. It was just the latest evidence of how much pressure lawmakers feel as they try to put together a bill that could include painful cuts and still result in a flood of new red ink. Indeed, the larger context is a bill taking shape that appears set to send the national debt to even greater heights. A framework that recently moved forward in Congress saw Republicans advance a plan that would allow adding $5.8 trillion in new deficit spending over the next decade. It's a plan that, as the deficit hawks at the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget recently noted, would authorize more new debt than the American Rescue Plan, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, the CARES Act during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law combined. The goal among the GOP is to combine an extension with new tax cuts that Trump repeatedly promised on the campaign trail, such as no taxes on overtime, tips, and Social Security benefits. Lawmakers want to offset some of the cost with hopes for up to $2 trillion in savings, but the proposed ideas for those cuts in areas like Medicaid have already run into significant GOP opposition. Treyz added Thursday that talks about tax increases on the rich remain under discussion on Capitol Hill largely because "the bottom line is they need money." She notes that if the tax increase is formally dropped, it will put even more pressure to act on unpopular ideas such as imposing a corporate SALT cap, cutting Medicaid or SNAP food benefits, or repealing the clean energy manufacturing tax credits. Another likely unpopular way to save money would be changing the popular child tax credit to require Social Security numbers from parents. That's an idea that a new study published by the Center on Migration Studies found would lead to 4.5 million citizen children with Social Security numbers — but with immigrant parents — losing access to the credit. The push to let taxes increase on the rich and help offset some of that sticker shock was always a long-shot effort, but it's one that gained significant traction. In an interview with Yahoo Finance just last week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wouldn't rule it out, saying, "We're looking at a range of revenue raisers ... we'll see where the president comes down on that." It now appears Trump has signaled his preference, which came in a back-and-forth with reporters in the Oval Office as he suggested, "Now with transportation so quick and so easy, [millionaires] leave countries, you'll lose a lot of money if you do that." Few see Trump's worries coming to fruition, though, if such a policy change happens. There was no flood of the wealthy moving into the US in 2017 when the rate was first implemented, and the top rates for the world's wealthiest are already higher elsewhere. In much of Europe, as just one example, the Tax Foundation finds that the richest residents are often taxed in the neighborhood of 50%. As Valliere suggested Thursday, "most billionaires wouldn't even notice a 1 or 2 percent tax hike." Ben Werschkul is a Washington correspondent for Yahoo Finance. Click here for political news related to business and money policies that will shape tomorrow's stock prices
