Baltic Dry Index. 1353 +50 Brent Crude 63.84
Spot Gold 3293 US 2 Year Yield 3.92 -0.04
US Federal Debt. 36.913 trillion US GDP 30.038 trillion.
Nobody knows the political system better than me, which is why I alone can fix it.
Donald Trump
In normal times in the stock casinos, today being the last trading day of the month, it would be dress up stocks Friday.
But this is far from normal times in the US and global economy.
Though Trump’s tariffs are still “temporarily” in effect, no one knows what the final court outcome to Trump’s tariff wars on friend and foe alike, will be.
That outcome will likely set the global economy on a boom or bust trajectory.
Double stock options anyone?
With all this massive uncertainty, how does meaningful trade negotiation take place?
Asia-Pacific
markets fall as U.S. appeals court reinstates Trump tariffs
Updated
Fri, May 30 2025 12:14 AM EDT
Asia-Pacific
markets fell Friday, with a slowing U.S. economy, inflation fears and
uncertainties from the judicial
developments surrounding U.S. President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal”
tariffs weighing on investor sentiment.
The U.S.
Court of International Trade ruled on Wednesday night that Trump had overstepped
his authority when he imposed his “reciprocal”
tariffs. The court ordered that the challenged tariff orders be vacated.
However,
the Trump administration filed a notice of appeal shortly after the judgment,
and an appeals court reinstated
the levies on Thursday afternoon. The administration said it could
ask the Supreme Court as early as Friday to pause the federal court’s
original ruling if necessary.
Japan’s
benchmark Nikkei 225 declined
1.37% while the broader Topix index fell 0.52% as investors parsed a slew of
data releases.
Tokyo’s
core inflation reading for April, which captures consumer costs
excluding fresh food, climbed 3.6% from a year ago, its highest level
since January 2023.
In South
Korea, the Kospi index
dropped 0.72%, while the small-cap Kosdaq moved down 0.12% in choppy
trade.
Mainland
China’s CSI 300 index
declined 0.33% while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index lost 1.48%.
Meanwhile,
India’s benchmark Nifty 50 started
trading flat while the BSE Sensex inched 0.24% lower.
Over in
Australia, the S&P/ASX
200 was flat.
U.S.
futures were little changed as investors await more trade
news and fresh inflation data.
Overnight
stateside, all three key benchmarks on Wall Street rose, even as gains were
curtailed by caution around the court rulings on Trump’s “reciprocal tariffs.”
The S&P 500 moved up thanks
to strong moves in chipmaker Nvidia.
The broad-based index ended the day higher by 0.4% at 5,912.17 despite climbing
as much as 0.9%.
Meanwhile,
the Nasdaq Composite advanced
0.39% to 19,175.87, also well off its highest intraday gain of 1.5%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added
117.03 points, or 0.28%, to finish at 42,215.73.
Asia markets today: Live updates for May 30, 2025
Second federal
court rules against Trump’s signature tariffs, intensifying legal battle
Published May
29, 2025 Updated May 29,
2025, 2:39 p.m. ET
A second
federal judge has ruled against President
Donald Trump’s sweeping use of emergency tariffs, intensifying the legal
and political battle over one of the administration’s signature economic
policies.
US
District Judge Rudolph Contreras of Washington, D.C., issued a preliminary
injunction on Thursday blocking the government from collecting tariffs from two
educational toy companies, Learning Resources Inc. and hand2mind Inc., who
manufacture most of their products in Asia.
In his
ruling, Contreras held that Trump
lacked authority under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act
(IEEPA) of 1977 to impose the duties outlined in four executive orders earlier
this year.
“The
International Economic Emergency Powers Act does not authorize the President to
impose the tariffs set forth,” Contreras wrote, adding that the statute
“doesn’t encompass the power to impose the sort of sweeping levies used by
Trump.”
He noted
that “in the five decades since IEEPA was enacted, no President until now has
ever invoked the statute…to impose tariffs.”
The
decision, which aligns with a separate ruling issued Wednesday by the US Court
of International Trade in New York, delivers another blow to Trump’s
second-term trade agenda.
A three-judge panel from that court similarly concluded that the president’s use of IEEPA to justify broad “reciprocal tariffs” was impermissible.
“That use is
impermissible not because it is unwise or ineffective, but because [IEEPA] does
not allow it,” the panel wrote.
In
response, the Trump administration moved quickly to contain the fallout.
The
Justice Department filed an emergency motion Thursday asking the US Court of
Appeals for the Federal Circuit to freeze the earlier ruling, saying the
decision “upends President Trump’s efforts to eliminate our exploding trade
deficit and reorient the global economy on an equal footing.”
“Absent
at least interim relief from this Court,” the department added, “the United
States plans to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court tomorrow to avoid
the irreparable national-security and economic harms at stake.”
Trump has
relied heavily on IEEPA to justify a raft of tariffs in his second term,
including duties on China, Mexico and Canada tied to fentanyl smuggling, as
well as the April launch of broad reciprocal tariffs targeting nearly all US
trading partners.
Legal
analysts say the twin rulings significantly complicate the administration’s
efforts to maintain that policy.
To allow
time for appeal, Contreras delayed the enforcement of his order for 14 days.
The
appeals process will now play out in two courts: the D.C. Circuit and the
Federal Circuit in Washington, both of which sit just blocks from the White
House.
If
appellate courts uphold the rulings, the issue could land before the Supreme
Court within weeks.
More
Second
federal court rules against Trump’s signature tariffs, intensifying legal
battle
U.S.-China talks
‘a bit stalled’ and need Trump and Xi to weigh in, Treasury Secretary Bessent
says
Published
Thu, May 29 2025 9:39 PM EDT
BEIJING —
U.S.-China trade talks “are a bit stalled,” requiring the two countries’
leaders to speak directly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News in an interview Thursday local time.
“I
believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks,” he
said, adding that there may be a call between the two countries’ leaders “at
some point.”
After a
rapid escalation in trade tensions last month, Bessent helped the world’s two
largest economies reach a breakthrough
agreement in Switzerland on May 12. The countries agreed to roll
back recent tariff increases of more than 100% for 90 days, or until
mid-August. Diplomatic officials from both sides had a call
late last week.
Still,
the U.S. has pushed ahead with tech
restrictions on Beijing, drawing its ire, while China has yet to
significantly ease restrictions on rare earths, contrary
to Washington’s expectations.
“I think
that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going
to require both leaders to weigh in with each other,” Bessent said. “They have
a very good relationship and I am confident that the Chinese will come to the
table when President [Donald] Trump makes his [preferences] known.”
Trump and
China’s President Xi Jinping last spoke in January, just before the U.S.
president was sworn in for his second term. While Trump has in recent
weeks said
he would like to speak with Xi, analysts expect China to agree to that only
if there’s certainty there will be no surprises from the U.S. during the call.
China has
maintained communication with the U.S. since the agreement in Switzerland,
Chinese Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He Yongqian told reporters at a
regular briefing Thursday.
But
regarding chip export controls, she said that “China again urges the U.S. to
immediately correct its wrong practices ... and together safeguard the
consensus reached at high-level talks in Geneva.”
That’s
according to a CNBC translation of her Mandarin-language remarks.
When
asked whether China would suspend rare earths’ export controls announced in
early April, He did not respond directly. Restrictions on items that could be
used for both military and civilian use reflect international practice, as well
as China’s position of “upholding world peace and regional stability,” she
said.
This
week, the Trump administration also announced it would start revoking
visas for Chinese students.
“The U.S.
decision to revoke Chinese student visas is fully unjustified,” China’s Foreign
Ministry Spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday, according to an official English
transcript. “It uses ideology and national security as pretext.”
U.S.-China
talks 'stalled' and need Trump and Xi to weigh in, Bessent says
In other
news, Trump tariffs by the back door?
Four tools at the
Trump administration’s disposal after a U.S. court blocks tariffs
Published
Thu, May 29 2025 4:06 AM EDT
U.S.
President Donald Trump is expected to find a workaround after suffering a major
blow to a core part of his economic agenda.
The U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday ruled that the president had overstepped his authority by
invoking the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose
sweeping tariffs on numerous countries.
The
Manhattan-based court not only ordered a permanent halt to most of Trump’s
tariffs, but also barred any future modifications to them.
A panel
of three judges gave the White House 10 days to complete the formal process of
halting the tariffs. The Trump administration swiftly appealed the ruling.
Economists
at Goldman Sachs said the White House has a few tools at its
disposal that could ensure it is only a temporary problem.
“This
ruling represents a setback for the administration’s tariff plans and increases
uncertainty but might not change the final outcome for most major US trading
partners,” analysts at Goldman Sachs said in a research note.
“For now,
we expect the Trump administration will find other ways to impose tariffs,”
they added.
Options
on the table
The Wall
Street bank said the ruling blocks the 10% baseline tariff imposed by Trump on
most imports, as well as the additional tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico –
but not sectoral tariffs, such as those imposed on steel, aluminum
and autos.
The Trump
administration does have other legal means of imposing tariffs, however,
according to Goldman. These include Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974,
Section 301 and Section 338 of the Trade Act of 1930.
Section
122 does not require a formal investigation and could therefore be one of the
swiftest ways to get around the court roadblock.
“The
administration could quickly replace the 10% across-the-board tariff with a
similar tariff of up to 15% under Sec. 122,” analysts at Goldman said. They
noted, however, that such a move would only last for up to 150 days after which
law requires Congressional action.
Trump
could also swiftly launch Section 301 investigations on key U.S. trading
partners, laying the bureaucratic groundwork for tariffs, although Goldman said
that this process will likely take several weeks at a minimum.
Section
232 tariffs, which are already in place for steel, aluminum and auto imports,
could also be broadened to other sectors, while Section 338 allows the
president to impose levies of up to 50% on imports from countries that
discriminate against the U.S.
Goldman
noted that the latter has not been used before.
What
about the Supreme Court?
James
Ransdell, partner at the law firm Cassidy Levy Kent, said the court opinion
marks the first of many other cases still pending — and the first substantive
opinion out of federal court “to really address the meat of the plaintiffs
challenge.”
Ransdell
said the speed of the Trump administration’s appeal was “very unusual” and
suggests the government could be working through the night to prepare its
motion for an emergency stay of the order.
He added
that it was “certainly a possibility” that the Supreme Court could end up
having the last say.
“There is
not a lot of precedent on this particular statute and on similar actions by the
president so there might be an interest that the Supreme Court has in taking
this up,” Ransdell told CNBC’s “The China Connection” on Thursday.
Steven
Blitz, chief U.S. economist at TS Lombard, said Trump had a “very good” level
of understanding of how to play the courts to get what he wants in terms of
playing for time.
“The
first thing he will probably do is an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court …
wanting to get a ruling from them that basically says you can keep these
tariffs in place while the appeals process runs through,” Blitz said Thursday.
“This
king-like executive order was always going to, at some point, going to run into
the courts … The difference between being a monarchy and being a constitutional
democracy is the legal system,” he added.
More
Trump expected to
find a workaround after trade court blocks tariffs
Work
hard. Someone's always watching.
Donald
Trump
Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession
Watch.
Given
our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,
inflation now needs an entire section of its own.
The
Fed Forecasts Stagflation
May
28, 2025
Federal
Reserve officials signaled concern at their meeting earlier this month that
large tariff hikes would push up prices and could risk stoking higher
inflation.
Policymakers
largely agreed that heightened economic uncertainty and increased risks of both
higher unemployment and inflation warranted no change in their wait-and-see
policy stance, according to minutes of the May 6-7 meeting released Wednesday.
“Participants
agreed that uncertainty about the economic outlook had increased further,
making it appropriate to take a cautious approach until the net economic
effects of the array of changes to government policies become clearer,” said
the minutes.
Between
officials’ most recent meetings in mid-March and early May, President Trump
ratcheted up tariffs on most U.S. trading partners before suspending
some of the most aggressive hikes. The minutes released Wednesday provided
a written account of how officials were digesting those initial moves.
Expectations
of a rate cut at the Fed’s next meeting in mid-June declined after Fed Chair
Jerome Powell said at a news conference after the last meeting that the
costs of waiting to learn more about the economy were “fairly low.”
In public comments since the meeting, Fed officials have roundly endorsed that
view, implying a high bar for the Fed to cut interest rates.
Since
officials last met, Trump agreed to lower
tariffs on China to
30% from 145%. The detente with Beijing has calmed nervous investors who feared
the U.S. economy might slow down rapidly and force the Fed to consider cutting
rates to shore up a flagging labor market.
Investors
in interest-rate futures markets expect the Fed will hold rates steady through
the summer.
The
Fed lowered its benchmark rate by a percentage point last year, to around 4.3%,
after inflation declined and the unemployment rate crept up. The central bank
had raised rates to a two-decade high in 2022 and 2023 to combat inflation.
Trump
last month backed off an implied threat to sack Powell, but he has continued
hectoring the central bank leader to reduce rates.
The
minutes strongly suggest the Fed isn’t close to lowering rates anytime soon.
Instead, the meeting summary, released with the customary three-week delay,
highlighted fears over a recipe for
stagflation,
where economic activity slows while price increases accelerate.
Trade-policy
announcements prompted the Fed’s staff economists to revise lower their
expectations for economic growth this year and next year compared with a
forecast prepared for the March meeting. As a result, the labor market was
projected to “weaken substantially” over the rest of the year, leading the
unemployment rate to rise and remain elevated through 2027.
Tariffs,
meanwhile, were expected to “boost inflation markedly this year and to provide
a smaller boost in 2026,” the minutes said. Even after substantially revising
their inflation forecast for 2025, officials thought that if their forecast
turns out to be wrong, it would be because inflation was even higher in 2026 or
2027.
The
minutes suggested that officials were particularly focused on the risks of
higher inflation. The minutes said almost all policymakers in attendance
flagged the risk that inflation could be more persistent than expected, the
minutes said.
Many
officials said business contacts or survey responses suggested firms “were
planning to either partially or fully pass on tariff-related cost increases to
consumers,” the minutes said. Some expressed concern that tariffs on
intermediate goods, such as steel or aluminum, could put additional pressure on
inflation.
More
Covid-19
Corner
This
section will continue only occasionally when something of interest occurs.
Technology
Update.
With events happening fast in the
development of solar power and graphene, among other things, I’ve added this
section. Updates as they get reported.
Glaphene: 2D
hybrid material integrates graphene and silica glass for next-generation
electronics
28 May
2025
Some
of the most promising materials for future technologies come in layers just one
atom thick, such as graphene, a sheet of carbon atoms arranged in a hexagonal
lattice, prized for its exceptional strength and conductivity. While hundreds
of such materials exist, truly merging them into something new has remained a
challenge. Most efforts simply stack these atom-thin sheets like a deck of
cards, but the layers typically lack significant interaction between them.
An
international team of researchers led by Rice University materials scientists
has succeeded in creating a genuine 2D hybrid by chemically integrating two
fundamentally different 2D materials—graphene and silica glass—into a single,
stable compound called glaphene, according to a study published in Advanced
Materials.
"The
layers do not just rest on each other; electrons move and form new interactions
and vibration states, giving rise to properties neither material has on its
own," said Sathvik Iyengar, a doctoral student at Rice and a first author
on the study.
More
importantly, Iyengar explained, the method could apply to a wide range of 2D
materials, enabling the development of designer 2D hybrids for next-generation
electronics, photonics and quantum devices.
"It
opens the door to combining entirely new classes of 2D materials—such as metals
with insulators or magnets with semiconductors—to create custom-built materials
from the ground up," Iyengar said.
The
team developed a two-step, single-reaction method to grow glaphene using a
liquid chemical precursor that contains both silicon and carbon. By tuning
oxygen levels during heating, they first grew graphene then shifted conditions
to favor the formation of a silica layer. This required a custom
high-temperature, low-pressure apparatus designed over several months in
collaboration with Anchal Srivastava, a visiting professor from Banaras Hindu
University in India.
"That
setup was what made the synthesis possible," Iyengar said. "The
resulting material is a true hybrid with new electronic and structural
properties."
Once
the material was synthesized, the Rice team worked on confirming its structure
with Manoj Tripathi and Alan Dalton at the University of Sussex. One of the
first clues that glaphene was something new came from an anomaly. When the team
analyzed the material using Raman spectroscopy—a technique that detects how
atoms vibrate by measuring subtle shifts in scattered laser light—they found
signals that did not match either graphene or silica. These unexpected
vibrational features hinted at a deeper interaction between the layers.
---- To better understand how the bonded layers behave at the atomic
level, the team collaborated with Vincent Meunier at Pennsylvania State
University to verify the experimental results against quantum simulations.
These confirmed that the graphene and silica layers interact and bond in a
unique way, partially sharing electrons across the interface. This hybrid
bonding changes the material's structure and behavior, turning a metal and an
insulator into a new type of semiconductor.
---- Pulickel Ajayan, Rice's Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson
Professor of Engineering and professor of materials science and
nanoengineering, said that while the discovery of glaphene is significant on
its own, what makes the research truly exciting is the broader method it
introduces: a new platform for chemically combining fundamentally different 2D
materials.
More
information: Sathvik Ajay Iyengar et al, Glaphene: A Hybridization of 2D Silica
Glass and Graphene, Advanced Materials (2025). DOI:
10.1002/adma.202419136
Glaphene: 2D
hybrid material integrates graphene and silica glass for next-generation
electronics
Next, the
world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.
World Debt
Clocks (usdebtclock.org)
Another weekend and it’s anyone’s guess what Trump
tariffs will apply next week, next month, next year? How does the EU or China
(or anyone) negotiate on trade, given that most of the Trump tariffs are now illegal,
but still “temporarily” in effect?
In the weekend LIR probably the best concerto written
for the cembalo, better known as harpsichord in English, by the long forgotten Belgian composer Toni
Fredi Gresnick, although he didn’t know he was Belgian, Belgium not existing at
the time.
Have a great weekend everyone.
The
illegal we do immediately. The unconstitutional takes a little longer.
Henry A. Kissinger
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