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Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump, China's Xi Jinping agree to resume trade talks
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping hopped on a phone call on Thursday to hash out the stalled trade talks between the two nations. Yahoo Finance Washington correspondent Ben Werschkul outlines the biggest takeaways from the call as trade negotiations are planned to resume between the US and China. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Well, a call between President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping took place Thursday and it restarted previously stalled trade talks between the two nations. Our Ben Worschel, still with us for more on that, which is, you know, more of a bigger market story today that that obviously caused some waves in the market earlier. What do we know about the call and what happens next, Ben? Yeah, so what we do know about the call is one the one real concrete thing from the call is the headline here is that trade talks will resume. These were talks that were stalled by by the admissions of both sides. They weren't talking to each other waiting on this call. And both sides came out of it saying, we're going to meet again. It's at a time to be determined and a place to be determined, but the two sides are going to get together. Secretary Scott Benson will lead the talks on the US side with two of his colleagues. So that's that's the concrete headline that the markets like this morning. And then there was a few signs without a lot of detail here of some of these some of these current issues being at least kind of lowering the temperature. Rare earth minerals is a big one. Trump talked about how they made progress on there, which is which has been the main Trump accusation, which is that China is cheating on this by not exporting enough rare earth minerals. China did not reciprocate, did not talk about rare earth in theirs, so we don't actually know any details about what they're going to do. But on this and other issues like international students, there are signs of at least a thawing, um, which I don't know that it gets us any closer to a deal, but it does at least suggest that this tariff pause, which which seemed teetering on the brink of collapse a couple days ago, will at least be in place for a while longer while the talks continue. All right, Ben. Thank you so much. Appreciate it. Sure thing. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla sinks: Elon Musk is irritating whole 'political spectrum'
Tensions between President Trump and Elon Musk are escalating, with Musk calling Trump a liar and downplaying the risk to his government contracts. Yahoo Finance Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul and Barron's associate editor Al Root join Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman on Market Domination to break down how the feud could hurt Tesla's (TSLA) brand and future electric vehicle (EV) sales. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Gentlemen, welcome to you both, Ben. I I will start with you. This has gotten personal very quickly. It feels like Trump they are really ratcheting this up, is threatening Musk government contracts. What do you make of it, Ben? Yeah, it's really been a really remarkable scene this afternoon with with these the series of Trump comments and and Musk basically live tweeting his response. There's even been a Musk response in the last 15 minutes to to some of Trump's comments. He called Trump a liar, which it feels like a a a real significant thing to call to call the President of the United States as well as suggesting he didn't really care about government contracts and noting that if if Elon's government contracts were were abolished, that would that the US government wouldn't be able to reach the space station. So it shows that this is this has escalated to in a level incredibly quickly and incredibly personally between these two men. um all all afternoon that that started with that Oval Office things. Um what it hasn't changed, I would argue to is is a lot of the is is the politics around this bill that Musk is going after. What we've seen is this kind of weird split screen here in Washington where this bill is is ratcheting forward and this Musk Trump uh war is is getting is reaching new heights. And Al, I want to bring you in on you know, what is at stake here and what is an issue here? Now on the one hand, it seems that Musk is reportedly upset that the Trump administration pulled its nomination for the head of NASA, which is a guy who is close to Musk, a friend of Musk. There also seems to be an issue, maybe the earlier than anticipation anticipated expiration of those EV tax credits in the bill. Musk says he doesn't care about that. He's all about the principle of spending here. But on the other hand, a recent JP Morgan note said that you know, Tesla really could stand to lose out on quite a lot of money with those tax cuts expiring at the end of this year, which is the the version that's in the current bill. Yeah, we have to it's it's a good question and it's such chaos. We should maybe take a second to center. So $7500 federal tax credit. Uh that goes away in Trump's one big beautiful bill at the end of the year. That's expected. Nobody is surprised about that. That's been out in and nobody expected that to survive. That affects everyone. The federal government is also challenging California's ability to regulate its own air emissions. That's what generates Tesla's ability to sell zero emission credits. Again, not a direct subsidy. Any company can do it, but Tesla is the one that sells the most EVs. Uh on the SpaceX side, SpaceX does business with the federal government. Tesla doesn't really do business with the federal government. Elon is absolutely right. You cancel those contracts, suddenly you can't get to and from the International Space Station. Uh uh SpaceX does about half of the global orbital launches around the world currently and its lead is accelerating. So all of those things go into the mix. But forget all that. The stock is done like 13, 14%. It's the worst two-day stretch since 2001. What is really at stake is again, sort of brand damage, Tesla's uh ability or Elon Musk's ability to irritate the left, left leading buyers that were uh willing to go green, irritate the right, potentially new EV buyers. So now everybody is is uh on the political spectrum is irritated with Tesla. Uh and that has sales implications. Sales have been very, very weak uh in 2025. We all know that. It's well documented. So focus more on what this means for Tesla sales and then and Elon's ability to uh not self, I will say not self-regulate and not do things in the interest of Tesla and his hundreds of thousands of employees because of his, remember what he told David Faber, his Princess Bride-like principle of being able to say whatever he wants whenever he wants. Sign in to access your portfolio
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla sinks: Elon Musk is irritating whole 'political spectrum'
Tensions between President Trump and Elon Musk are escalating, with Musk calling Trump a liar and downplaying the risk to his government contracts. Yahoo Finance Washington Correspondent Ben Werschkul and Barron's associate editor Al Root join Josh Lipton and Julie Hyman on Market Domination to break down how the feud could hurt Tesla's (TSLA) brand and future electric vehicle (EV) sales. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump, China's Xi Jinping agree to resume trade talks
President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping hopped on a phone call on Thursday to hash out the stalled trade talks between the two nations. Yahoo Finance Washington correspondent Ben Werschkul outlines the biggest takeaways from the call as trade negotiations are planned to resume between the US and China. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Tariffs: Trump claims a wave of trade deals are on the way
As US officials have been pressing trade partners to reach deals around finalized tariff rates, President Trump has claimed that there are deals coming in the "not-too-distant future." Yahoo Finance Washington correspondent Ben Werschkul reports on the latest installment in Trump's tariff saga. Also read up on Ben Werschkul's latest piece covering Elon Musk's criticisms of President Trump's so-called "big, beautiful" spending and tax bill. To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here. Washington has seen more promises this week from the Trump administration of of trade deals, imminent trade deals. What's the latest with the deals right now, Ben? Sure thing. So, I I wrote about this today. I'm kind of a glutton for punishment. So, there we had a, we had one comment today, or yesterday from Commerce Secretary Ross about a deal in the very near future for for India. So, I was curious kind of how many comments like this are similar. I just I did a quick pass through since Liberation Day. I found over two dozen kind of similar comments from Trump and his team. Trump in the middle of April, Trump talked about how trade talks would only take three to four weeks. That was over seven weeks ago. Peter Navarro has sort of infamously said it would be 90 deals in 90 days, and of course we have one limited deal right now in the UK. It sort of speaks to the kind of dampening effect on the markets, I think, of these Trump pronouncements so far. I think India, there are good signs. I think we could have a deal with India relatively soon. But a lot of these, so many of these promises have not come to be. And as as for what it means for the next 30 days, the next deadline is July 8th there for Trump's tariffs. There's one one analyst, uh, a note today had had a good outcome. One one scenario is the optimistic scenario. We get some face saving. Trump is able to to declare victory and say he won and back away from these. The other is that these slow walk talks continue to be slow walked, and we kind of have a more aggressive tariff tariff coming tariffs increases in July. These analysts predicted the second scenario was their base case. So, so not a good sign for the the continuing lowering of tariffs. No, not and not a good sign. Maybe that, you know, markets, even though they've gotten a little numb to it because of the so-called taco trade, maybe that would make them pay attention again. For sure. Yeah. Ben, thanks so much. Appreciate it.
