Saturday, 28 June 2025

Special Update 28/06/2025 Core PCE Rises. GDP Falls Again. Tariff TACO?

 Baltic Dry Index. 1521 -32            Brent Crude 67.77

Spot Gold 3274                   U S 2 Year Yield 3.73 +0.03

US Federal Debt. 37.034 trillion

US GDP 30.100 trillion

The difference between stupidity and genius is that genius has its limits.

Albert Einstein

Did President Trump just kill the US stocks rally?

Irate that his attempt to make Canada the 51st US State failed dismally, President Trump, on Friday, lashed out at Canada and all Canadians.

I suspect most Canadians know only too well how to hit back against US made products and services, plus avoiding tourism into the USA.

Following Trump’s announcement, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite both turned negative, retreating from the record highs they had reached earlier in the day.

Unfortunately, this sends out a signal to the EU and rest of the world that it’s pointless in trying to negotiate with an unstable and unreliable US President.

After re-negotiating NAFTA into the USMCA in his first term, President Trump reneged on USMCA in his first days in office in his second term

Even if Canada placated Trump on the digital service tax, how long before Trump reneged on that deal?

But I want to thank everybody for coming — coming to the White House on this very momentous, historic, and joyous occasion.  It’s been a long time.  Everybody said this was a deal that could not be done.  “Too complicated, too big.  It couldn’t be done.”  We got it done.

And today, we’re finally ending the NAFTA nightmare and signing into law the brand-new U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement.  Very special.  Very, very special.

President Trump, January 29, 2020. USMCA signing ceremony.

Trump ends all U.S. trade talks with Canada over digital services tax

Published Fri, Jun 27 2025 1:51 PM EDT Updated Fri, Jun 27 2025 5:18 PM EDT

President Donald Trump on Friday said the United States is immediately “terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada” in response to Ottawa’s decision to impose a digital services tax on American tech firms.

Trump’s surprise announcement on Truth Social accused Canada of “copying the European Union” with the “egregious” tax.

“We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period,” Trump added.

Read Trump’s full post:

“We have just been informed that Canada, a very difficult Country to TRADE with, including the fact that they have charged our Farmers as much as 400% Tariffs, for years, on Dairy Products, has just announced that they are putting a Digital Services Tax on our American Technology Companies, which is a direct and blatant attack on our Country. They are obviously copying the European Union, which has done the same thing, and is currently under discussion with us, also. Based on this egregious Tax, we are hereby terminating ALL discussions on Trade with Canada, effective immediately. We will let Canada know the Tariff that they will be paying to do business with the United States of America within the next seven day period. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”

“We have such power over Canada,” Trump said in the Oval Office later Friday.

“They were foolish” to go forward with the new tax, Trump said.

He said the U.S. would “stop all negotiations with Canada right now until they straighten out their act.”

The office of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.

The president’s angry declaration suddenly imperils America’s trade relationship with a close ally that has long been one of its top two global trading partners.

U.S. goods trade with Canada totaled roughly $762 billion last year, according to the office of the U.S. trade representative.

Following Trump’s announcement, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite both turned negative, retreating from the record highs they had reached earlier in the day.

The first payments from Canada’s digital services tax, which was enacted last year and applies retroactively to 2022, are set to be collected Monday. The tax would hit both domestic and foreign tech companies, including U.S. giants such as AmazonGoogle and Meta.

Canadian officials said this month that they would not pause the digital services tax, despite ferocious opposition from the United States.

“Obviously, we think it’s patently unfair to do it retroactively,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said later Friday on CNBC’s “Closing Bell: Overtime.”

Bessent said the Trump administration was hoping that Carney’s government would “put a brake on” the tax “as a sign of goodwill.”

He now expects that Trump trade representative Jamieson Greer will start an unfair trade practice investigation under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 “to determine the amount of harm” that the new Canadian taxes pose to the U.S.

Trump ends all U.S. trade talks with Canada over digital services tax

Trump shrugs off July tariff deadline: ‘We can do whatever we want’

Published Fri, Jun 27 2025 4:06 PM EDT

President Donald Trump said Friday he may not stick to the deadline in early July when massive U.S. tariffs are set to snap back into effect on a slew of countries.

“No, we can do whatever we want,” Trump said at the White House when asked if his deadline was set in stone. “We could extend it. We could make it shorter.”

The question had specifically been about July 9, the deadline for the U.S. and the European Union to negotiate a trade deal or else trigger a 50% tariff on EU imports to take effect.

But the president’s answer appeared to refer to a July 8 deadline when a three-month pause on his self-described “reciprocal tariffs” on many nations ends, sending country-specific tariff rates back up to their initial, much higher levels.

Despite Trump’s apparent flexibility as to the dates, the executive order he signed on April 9 is not flexible unless it’s formally updated.

That order reduced Trump’s country-specific tariffs down to a rate of 10% across the board for 90 days, and specified that the temporary reprieve would only last for three months.

Unless Trump revises his order, the sweeping tariffs will return to their sky-high rates in 12 days.

That could have a major impact on a slew of U.S. trading partners, and risks repeating the global economic turmoil that Trump set off when he announced the initial tariff rates on April 2.

Countries were blindsided by the massive import duties — some as high as nearly 50% — that Trump rolled out on what he called “liberation day.”

What immediately followed were days of highly volatile markets and criticism and alarm from investors, world leaders and importers. One week later, Trump announced a 90-day pause on the new tariff rates.

The White House initially suggested in April that it would hammer out individual trade deals with scores of countries in the intervening months.

But with less than two weeks remaining in the 90-day interim period, the White House has so far only struck limited trade agreements with China and the United Kingdom.

Both of those deals have been described as more akin to frameworks than to finalized deals. Beijing’s Commerce Ministry said earlier Friday that China and the U.S. have confirmed the details of the trade framework that both sides agreed to in prior talks.

More

Trump July tariff deadline: 'We can do whatever we want'

Core inflation rate rose to 2.7% in May, more than expected, Fed’s preferred gauge shows

Published Fri, Jun 27 2025 8:35 AM EDT

Prices that consumers pay rose slightly in May, while the annual inflation rate edged further away from the Federal Reserve’s target, according to a Commerce Department report Friday.

The personal consumption expenditures price index, the Fed’s primary inflation reading, rose a seasonally adjusted 0.1% for the month, putting the annual inflation rate at 2.3%. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones had been looking for respective levels of 0.1% and 2.3%.

Excluding food and energy, core PCE posted respective readings of 0.2% and 2.7%, compared to estimates for 0.1% and 2.6%. Fed policymakers consider core to be a better measure of long-term trends because of historic volatility in the two categories. The annual rate was 0.1 percentage point ahead of the April reading.

Along with the inflation numbers, consumer spending and income showed further signs of weakening. Spending fell 0.1% for the month, compared to the estimate for an increase of 0.1%. Personal income declined 0.4%, against the forecast for a gain of 0.3%.

Markets had little reaction to the data, with stock market futures indicating a positive open on Wall Street while Treasury yields also rose.

The report comes with the Fed contemplating its next move on interest rates.

Markets largely expect the central bank to remain on hold at its late July meeting. However, a few officials of late have been advocating a cut as long as inflation data shows muted pressures from the tariffs President Donald Trump has instituted since taking office in January.

Trump has been pushing the Fed to ease, insisting that inflation is low and the Fed can always switch gears if prices start moving higher again.

Fed Chair Jerome Powell, though, has advocated a more cautious report, despite increasingly aggressive pressure from the president. Trump has been criticizing Powell on a regular basis lately, earlier this week calling him “stupid” and indicating that he will name a successor soon.

Inflation pressures generally were muted in May.

Food prices increased 0.2%, but that was offset by a 1% decline in energy-related goods and services costs, including a 2.2% slide in gasoline and other energy goods. Shelter prices increased 0.3%.

PCE inflation report May 2025:

In other news, was AI 171 brought down by a failed bus and faulty Boeing software?

Bus or Bus-Bar

Description

Electrical power is supplied to the various electrically energised components in an aircraft via common points called bus-bars or busses. The electrical power distribution system is based on one or more busses, the number of which varies as a function of the size and the complexity of the aircraft. Bus naming convention varies by manufacturer but names such as Essential AC Bus, Left DC Bus and Battery Bus are commonly used to denote importance, power source and voltage.

Accidents and Incidents

Related Articles

Bus or Bus-Bar | SKYbrary Aviation Safety

Global Inflation/Stagflation/Recession Watch.        

Given our Magic Money Tree central banksters and our spendthrift politicians,  inflation/recession now needs an entire section of its own.

US GDP Revised Lower as Consumers Slash Services Spending

26 June 2025

(Bloomberg) -- US consumer spending grew in the first quarter at the weakest pace since the onset of the pandemic on a sharp deceleration in outlays for a variety of services.

Spending on services contributed 0.3 percentage point to gross domestic product in the first three months of the year, the least since the second quarter of 2020, according to Bureau of Economic Analysis figures published Thursday. That was down sharply from a previously reported 0.79 point boost.

Overall consumer spending increased at a 0.5% pace, instead of the previously reported 1.2%. GDP declined at a downwardly revised 0.5% annualized rate in the first quarter as a result.

The numbers indicate the economy’s woes early in the year weren’t entirely related to the deterioration in the trade balance related to the Trump administration’s tariffs.

“Recreational services and travel are among the components of spending that we flagged as being sensitive to shocks in consumer sentiment,” Ryan Sweet, chief US economist at Oxford Economics, said in a note. “High-frequency data that we track on US travel continue to deteriorate and will be a drag on Q2 GDP.”

All seven major categories of services spending were revised lower in the figures published Thursday. Recreation services spending led the downward revision, subtracting 0.14 percentage point from GDP instead of the previously reported 0.04 point boost.

The contributions from other services, includes net foreign travel, and transportation were also among the categories posting the largest downward revisions.

US GDP Revised Lower as Consumers Slash Services Spending

Heathrow warns of weakening demand for US business travel

UK’s largest airport says US economic uncertainty has made market ‘challenging’

27 June 2025

Heathrow has warned of a more “challenging” market for transatlantic flights triggered by economic uncertainty in the US, as the UK’s biggest airport said it was seeing “early signs of softness” on business routes.

The airport, Europe’s busiest by passenger numbers, said on Friday there was an “overhanging uncertainty” over transatlantic demand, even as it forecast a 0.5 per cent increase in passenger numbers this year to 84.2mn.

The investor update is the latest sign of the fallout from US President Donald Trump’s trade war and rising consumer nervousness about the economic outlook in the country. It follows warnings from several major airlines this year about slowing demand from US travellers, many of whom have started delaying holiday bookings and paring back plans.

Heathrow said early weakness on US routes used by business travellers appeared to be linked more to “economic uncertainty than geopolitical reasons”, while leisure routes were holding up better.

It added that while passenger and cargo volumes on North American routes had risen for the first five months of the year compared with 2024, the impact of “economic uncertainty across North America” had made this market “more challenging”. “We are maintaining a close watching brief on traffic trends,” the airport said. Passenger growth in the first five months of the year had been driven by growth in routes to and from Latin America, the Middle East and Asia-Pacific, it said.

That growth came despite Heathrow’s near-total closure on March 21 after a fire at a nearby electricity substation cut off power supplies to the airport.

The statement said the airport was implementing the 28 recommendations of a report into the incident by Ruth Kelly, a former transport secretary.

More

Heathrow warns of weakening demand for US business travel

If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.

Albert Einstein

Technology Update.

With events happening fast in the development of solar power and graphene, I’ve added this section.

This weekend, China’s COMAC gets ready to take Boeing and Airbus in widebody commercial jets next decade. Approx. 16 minutes.

Boeing & Airbus STUNNED As China’s C929 Aircraft NAILS 12,000km Test Flight!

Boeing & Airbus STUNNED As China’s C929 Aircraft NAILS 12,000km Test Flight!

Next, the world global debt clock. Nations debts to GDP compared.

World Debt Clocks (usdebtclock.org)

Exponent Calculator

Enter values into any two of the input fields to solve for the third.

Exponent Calculator

This weekend’s music diversion. A rare, for me, minor key concerto, I much prefer major key music.  Approx. 13 minutes.

Johann Friedrich Fasch - Concerto per liuto in re minore FWV L:d 2

Johann Friedrich Fasch - Concerto per liuto in re minore FWV L:d 2

Next, a diversion from today’s terrible wars.  The Ridgeway, the UK and Europe’s oldest “road”.

I have seen the Ridgeway in Berkshire, climbed man-made Silbury Hill, (you can’t do that anymore,) been inside the West Kennet long barrow. Been to Avebury circle and village several times. Visited Uffington hill fort and white horse in winter and summer, summer is best, ice cream van and refreshment vans in the car park. Well, you didn’t think I walked there, did you?   Approx.14 minutes.

Is the RIDGEWAY really 5000 years old?

Is the RIDGEWAY really 5000 years old? - YouTube

Uffington White Horse

Uffington White Horse - Wikipedia

Finally, June 24th, 1982. BA flight 9. When all four 747 engines failed. Approx. 36 minutes.

HORRIFYING - all 4 engines FAILED! | British Airways flight 9

HORRIFYING - all 4 engines FAILED! | British Airways flight 9 - YouTube

The more I study science, the more I believe in God.

Albert Einstein

No comments:

Post a Comment