Alarm over China's stranglehold on critical minerals grew on Tuesday as global automakers joined their U.S. counterparts to complain that restrictions by China on exports of rare earth alloys, mixtures and magnets could cause production delays and outages without a quick solution. German automakers became the latest to warn that China's export restrictions threaten to shut down production and rattle their local economies, following a similar complaint from an Indian EV maker last week. China's decision in April to suspend exports of a wide range of rare earths and related magnets has...
Private business in the US added 37K workers to their payrolls in May 2025, the lowest since March 2023, compared to a downwardly revised 60K in April and forecasts of 115K. The services sector added 36K jobs, led by leisure/hospitality (38K), financial activities (20K) and information (8K) while job losses occurred in professional/business services (-17K), education/health (-13K) and trade/transportation/utilities (-4K). Also, the goods producing sector lost 2K jobs as falls in natural resources/mining (-5K) and manufacturing (-3K) offset a rise of 6K jobs in construction. "After a strong...
In a post published on Truth Social on Wednesday (04/06), United States President Donald Trump called on Federal Reserve (Fed) Chairman Jerome Powell to cut policy interest rates. "ADP NUMBERS ARE OUT!!! "Too late" Powell must now LOWER RATES. He's been great!!! Europe has cut NINE TIMES," Trump said. Earlier in the day, data published by Automatic Data Processing (ADP) showed that private sector payrolls rose by just 37,000 in May, marking the lowest reading since March 2023. This reading missed market expectations of 115,000 by a wide margin. Market reaction The US Dollar (USD)...