U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent met with BlackRock Inc executive Rick Rieder in New York on Friday, as the Trump administration continued its search for a new chair for the Federal Reserve, a source familiar with the matter said. Bessent has now spoken with four of the 11 candidates on the administration's list of candidates to replace Fed chair Jerome Powell, whose term expires in May, the source said. Bloomberg first reported Bessent's meeting with Rieder, BlackRock's CIO of fixed income, and called him a rising contender for the post. The two met for two hours and discussed...
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that abandoning uranium enrichment was "100%" against the country's interests, rejecting a central U.S. demand in talks to resolve a decades-long dispute over Tehran's nuclear ambitions. The U.S. proposal for a new nuclear deal was presented to Iran on Saturday by Oman, which has mediated talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and President Donald Trump's Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff. After five rounds of talks, several hard-to-bridge issues remain, including Iran's insistence on maintaining uranium enrichment...
Industry executives are warning that U.S. President Donald Trump's recent 50% tariffs on aluminum imports may be too much for consumers to swallow and could destroy demand. "We're concerned about the potential demand destruction" of the levies, especially at current levels, Derek Prichett, senior vice president of global metals at Novelis Inc., said at the 17th Harbor Aluminum summit in Chicago. "Overall, it's a drag," Prichett said, adding that his company's Canadian-U.S. operations have been particularly affected by the tariffs. The Atlanta, Georgia-based company is the largest maker of...
President Donald Trump said Russian leader Vladimir Putin warned him that he would retaliate for a recent Ukrainian drone strike on a Russian airfield in a phone call Wednesday, signaling further complications in U.S. efforts to broker a cease-fire. "It was a good conversation, but not one that will lead to immediate Peace," Trump said of the call, which lasted more than an hour, in a social media post. "President Putin said, and very emphatically, that he must respond to the recent attack on the airfield." Trump said the pair also discussed ongoing nuclear talks with Iran and that the...
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)...
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...
Asia-Pacific markets traded higher, tracking Wall Street gains overnight.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.41% after hitting a fresh record high on Thursday, while the Topix added 0.61%. South...
Both the STOXX 50 and STOXX 600 hovered around the flatline on Friday, as investors adopted a cautious stance ahead of further developments in trade talks between US President Trump and Chinese...
Poland rejected on Friday a suggestion by Donald Trump that Russian drone incursions into its airspace could have been a mistake, a rare contradiction of the U.S. president from one of Washington's...