Taiwanese semiconductor and tech companies, led by Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing (TSM), the chip foundry critical to global AI supply chains, have committed at least $250 billion in investmentS to build and expand chip, energy, and AI production capacity in the U.S.
CEOs will sit down at their desks next week all across the U.S. economy and ask “What does this do to my costs and my supply chains.”And there won’t be any answers. This is the newest disruption to U.S. trade put forward by President Donald Trump. On Saturday President Trump announced that he would impose a new 10% tariff, effective February 1, on a bloc of European nations until they come to the negotiating table to sell Greenland. The targets include Norway, Sweden, France, Germany, Britain, the Netherlands and Finland.
If those nations do not relent, he added in his post, the rate will increase to 25% on June 1, “until such time as a Deal is reached for the Complete and Total purchase of Greenland.”
Costco Wholesale (COST) has sued seeking a full refund on the duties it has paid as a result of President Donald Trump’s global tariffs imposed this year. Costco filed the lawsuit at the U.S. Court of International Trade on Friday, saying the administration’s tariffs imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) are unlawful. It comes as the Supreme Court is considering whether Trump has legal authority to impose tariffs on a vast range of goods from nearly all countries.
Novo Nordisk (NVO) and Eli Lilly (LLY) traded higher on Thursday as the companies announced a major drug-pricing deal with the Trump administration. The companies’ GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, which cost roughly $1,000 to $1,350 per month now for patients without insurance, will be available for Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries at sharply lower prices from 2026. The Wall Street Journal reported that Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly will offer the lowest doses of their weight-loss drugs, Wegovy and Zepbound, through TrumpRx for $149 and $299 per month, respectively. So why would these drug makers agree to cut prices by $850 to $1,000 a month?
China has bought at least two cargoes of US soybeans, its first known purchase this season. This might mark a revival of thU.S. China soybean trade after talks between presidents Trump and XI. The shipments are booked for loading and possible delivery later this year, sources told Bloomberg.
Heading into Thursday’s high profile meeting between U.S. President Donald Trump and China’s President Xi Jinping the White House has announced that negotiators have reached a framework for a trade deal to avert additional U.S. 100% tariffs that President Donald Trump had threatened to impose on imports from China, and the delegation from Beijing had agreed to defer restrictions on exports of rare earth minerals to the United States. I think U.S financial markets (and especially tech stocks) and the U.S. dollar are likely to move higher on Monday as Wall Street will see this as a significant de-escalation of the trade war between the world’s two largest economies.
Thursday’s meeting between US. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit will move financial markets.In the short run.After a big positive announcement. That will do almost nothing to end the economic war between the two countries. Investors will bid up the dollar and Treasuries, anyway, and sell gold and other hedges. Then gradually investors will realize that, again, they’ve reacted as if the empty words meant something. And markets will go back to selling the dollar and buying gold. The smart move now, I think, is to use dollar strength and gold’s weakness to add to gold positions.
Customs data show U.S. soybean exports to China collapsed to zero last month from 1.7 million metric tons a year earlier. This marks the first time since November 2018 that no U.S. soybeans were shipped to China during the month. It’s not that China isn’t buying soybeans. China’s total soybean imports reached 12.87 million tons in September, the second-highest on record, and powered by huge deliveries from the region. It’’s just not buying them from the United States as the U.S.-China trade war resumes. And China looks for leverage against U.S. threats to restrict the export of chip-making equipment and chips themselves TO China. China has switched its buying to Latin America.
On Friday President Donald Trump said he would impose a new 100% tariff on goods from China, after Chinese leader Xi Jinping issued new export restrictions on rare earth minerals essential for technology products. Trump made the threat shortly after the markets closed but stocks were already down biggly and on earlier threats to increase tariffs and to cancel a meeting later this month with Xi. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down almost 900 points, and the S&P 500 sank 2.7 percent in the biggest one-day drop since April. But that was Friday. Today after President Trump posted a reassuring message–Don’t worry; everything is going to be fine–on Truth Social stocks recovered and then some. All three major U.S. stock indexes finished with gains: the S&P 500 was up 1.37% for the day; the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed up 0.93%; and the Nasdaq Composite: ended up 1.7%. The markets had decided this was just another TACO dip. (Trump Always Chickens Out.)
The Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments beginning on November 5 considering whether the “reciprocal” tariffs President Donald Trump has placed on countries around the world are unconstitutional. I think there’s a good chance that even this Supreme Court will find these tariffs unconstitutional. The legal basis for these tariffs the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. The law grants the President extraordinary powers–whether setting tariffs is included among those powers is an open question–in case of an emergency. The Trump Administration hasn’t been able to provide reasons for declaring an emergency. The argument that a trade deficit is an emergency now is laughable. But with this Supreme Court, you never know. So the Trump administration has been hedging its bets. The administration has proposed or issued tariffs that cover more than a third of U.S. imports under a legal provision, known as Section 232, that allows the President to impose tariffs aFTer an investigation by the Commerce Department has found that imports in a specific sector or industry present a danger to national security.
Nobody knows how the Supreme Court will rule–oral arguments are set for November 5–on the legality of the Trump Administration’s global tariff schedule. But Wall Street investors hedge fund have recently been willing to offer importers 20 cents for every dollar they paid in Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs, Salvatore Stile, founder of Alba Wheels Up International, a New York-based customs broker, told the Washington Post.
China’s export growth slowed to the weakest in six months. Shipments to the U.S. slumped, but exports to other markets climbed, keeping Beijing on track for a record trade surplus of over $1.2 trillion this year.By steering exports to markets outside the United States as import growth stayed weak, China has racked up a trade surplus of just over $785 billion in the first eight months of the year, almost a third more than during the same period of 2024.
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