News

The United States will impose 25% blanket tariffs on imports from Japan and South Korea starting August 1, President Donald Trump revealed Monday.

Trump, in a pair of Truth Social posts, shared screenshots of letters apparently sent to Japanese Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung dictating the new tariff rates.

Stocks fell Monday as traders weighed the latest developments on the trade front to start the week.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 447 points, or 1%. The S&P 500 fell 0.8%, and the Nasdaq Composite lost 0.9%.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” that there would be several trade announcements over the next 48 hours, adding that he expects “it’s going to be a busy couple of days.” However, Bessent did not specify which countries would be involved.

Chilean copper mines had their best month of export revenue in more than three years in June, with the increase in value outstripping price gains in a sign of rising production.

The country that accounts for about a quarter of the world’s mined copper shipped $4.7 billion worth of the metal last month, the biggest haul since December of 2021, according to data released by the Chilean central bank on Monday.

That’s 17% more than the same month last year, signalling that at least part of the increase was the result of higher volume given prices rose 11% on average over the same period. Chile is yet to report June production.

Blackstone Inc. is exploring further inroads into the booming private credit-secondaries market, people with knowledge of the matter said.

The alternative investing giant is considering a stand-alone pool of capital to buy second-hand private credit funds, said the people, who weren’t authorised to speak publicly as the matter is private. That would be a departure from the current approach where it invests through its flagship private equity funds.

A new strategy would fall under the remit of Blackstone’s Strategic Partners secondaries unit specialising in private equity, infrastructure and real estate. A spokesperson for Blackstone declined to comment.

Donald Trump accused Brazil of politically persecuting Jair Bolsonaro, launching a strident defense of the right-wing former president who is set to face trial on charges that he attempted a coup.

“I’ll be watching the WITCH HUNT of Jair Bolsonaro, his family, and thousands of his supporters, very closely,” Trump said in a Monday morning social media post. “The only Trial that should be happening is a Trial by the Voters of Brazil — It’s called an Election. LEAVE BOLSONARO ALONE!”

Bolsonaro, who forged close ties to Trump by mimicking his political and governing style during his time in office, will face trial later this year on charges that he attempted a coup against President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva following his narrow defeat in the 2022 election.

Stocks fell and the dollar rose at the start of a potentially volatile week as US trading partners rushed to finalise deals with President Donald Trump’s administration before Wednesday’s deadline. Short-dated Treasuries outperformed.

Following a rally to all-time highs, the S&P 500 lost steam, with a gauge of megacaps down about 1.5%. Tesla Inc. tumbled 7% as Elon Musk announced he’s formed a new political party, digging deeper into a pursuit that’s been a drag on his most valuable business.

Yemen’s Houthis have claimed responsibility for an attack on a ship sailing through the Red Sea on Sunday, in their first strike on merchant shipping since December.

The rebel group fired drones and missiles at the Magic Seas, an Ultramax vessel owned by Greece’s Stem Shipping, Houthi armed forces spokesperson Yahya Saree said in a televised statement on Monday.

The vessel was targeted because it had called at Israeli ports in the past, Saree said. Representatives of Stem Shipping were not immediately available to comment.

The Houthis started attacking commercial ships in late 2023, prompting the number of vessels transiting the Suez Canal to collapse. Traffic through the waterway, which is crucial to global trade, remained low in the first half of 2025 despite the absence of new attacks. In May, US President Donald Trump said a truce had been brokered with the Houthis.

The world’s biggest oil product market is hungry for barrels as traders grapple with a summer supply squeeze.

US stockpiles of diesel products have dropped to the lowest for the time of year since 1996, while in Europe, benchmark futures are signalling a tighter market than during the height of the Israel-Iran conflict. The cost of the fuel relative to crude — a key trading metric known as the crack — is well above seasonal norms in both regions.

The pressure on supplies has been driven by refinery closures on both sides of the Atlantic and a slew of recent outages, as well as the impact of production curbs by key OPEC+ producers. Last month, diesel accounted for just 31.4% of global output of oil products, well below the seasonal average, according to figures from Energy Aspects Ltd.

Activist short seller Andrew Left is set to appear in federal court Monday in a securities fraud case that shook the industry a year ago, setting up a battle over investor tips and free speech.

A judge in Los Angeles will hear arguments on whether to dismiss the criminal case accusing Left of using false and misleading social-media posts about his trading intentions in more than a dozen companies to make a quick profit. Left claims the US Justice Department is targeting him unfairly and hasn’t proved he told a single lie.

“His case is a critical test for protecting free speech on social media,” Left’s attorney Eric Rosen, a former federal prosecutor, said in a statement. “After seven years, the DOJ still cannot point to a single false statement by Andrew — that is because there were none.”

S. Daniel Abraham, the New Yorker who became a billionaire by tempting dieters with Slim-Fast meal-replacement shakes and selling his company in 2000 to Unilever NV, has died. He was 100. He died on June 29, according to American Friends of Bar-Ilan University, on whose board he had served.

Abraham, who lived in Israel with his family from 1972 to 1978, co-founded the Washington-based S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace in 1989. He was a major donor to the US Democratic Party. His net worth was about $2.4 billion, according to Forbes magazine.

A group of Sunnova Energy’s unsecured creditors voiced opposition to the final approval of a debtor-in-possession facility, including a proposed legal release for pre-petition lender KKR & Co.

The proposed $90 million DIP lending — which would fund bankruptcy proceedings and business operations — requires the solar company to agree to give up its right to pursue claims against KKR, according to court papers. The initial portion the loan has been approved.

The facility was entered “when the debtors’ solvency was clearly in question,” the group said in papers filed Thursday. “KKR should not receive such a broad release this early in the case.”

The head of Vestas Wind Systems A/S, one of the world’s largest wind turbine makers, has a blunt warning for Europe: adopt bolder industrial policy or risk watching business drift across the Atlantic and to other regions.

As demand rises for cheap and reliable power, Vestas’s Chief Executive Henrik Andersen said in an interview with Bloomberg News that the European Union’s fragmented approach to industry jeopardises the continent’s quest to achieve energy independence and compete against other global manufacturers.

“Wind is largely a European creation — born in our universities, tested on our sites,” he said. “If we don’t protect and support what we’ve built, companies like ours will eventually move out of Europe. It’s that simple.”

A pre-summer frenzy in junk loans is seeing the market start to overheat, prompting investors to get a bit more picky about deals after spreads reached the tightest levels in years.

A rush of issuance — driven by private equity firms seeking to improve the capital structures of portfolio companies — had been met with high demand from M&A-starved investors, enabling borrowers to squeeze their interest margins by as much as 75 basis points on some offerings.

But some investors are now feeling the strain. Managers of collateralised loan obligations — the biggest buyers of leveraged loans — are particularly struggling to make the numbers work.

BRICS officials kept their collective heads down on Monday morning as they awoke to an overnight threat by US President Donald Trump to penalize them for adopting policies he said were “anti-American.”

Members of the ten-nation grouping of emerging-market economies were reluctant to engage with Trump’s warning of additional 10% tariffs as they left their hotels in suddenly-rainy Rio de Janeiro for the concluding day of the BRICS summit hosted by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The Brazilian leader declined to comment to reporters, saying he would speak only after the summit. His top foreign policy adviser, Celso Amorim, avoided escalation in his response.

“The threats only show the need for an organisation like the BRICS, which has the capacity to react, to meet and reach conclusions,” he said in an interview, noting that BRICS “didn’t threaten the US with anything.”

Stc Group’s venture capital arm has invested in Tarmeez Capital, a Saudi debt investment platform planning a push into private credit.

Tali Ventures took a minority stake in the Riyadh-based firm, Tarmeez Chief Executive Officer Nasser Alsaadoun said, without disclosing details on the deal. Tarmeez expects to get its asset management license in Saudi Arabia later this year, allowing it to start originating and managing credit to private companies, he added.

It aims to then raise as much as 1 billion riyals ($267 million) for its first private credit fund within two years. Tarmeez will also consider an initial public offering in the next three years, Alsaadoun said in an interview.

China is considering doubling an investment channel local investors use to buy bonds overseas, according to people familiar with the matter, a major step in its efforts to loosen restrictions on financial flows.

Regulators in the country have held early talks about expanding the so-called Southbound Bond Connect program to as much as 1 trillion yuan ($139 billion), said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private. The expansion would be through an up-to-500 billion yuan annual quota to non-bank financial institutions, which are currently left out of the trading link.

Any such move would allow onshore firms to ramp up their exposure to international bonds that are tradeable through Hong Kong’s stock exchange, including those denominated in dollars. The country’s biggest mutual funds would be among the firms eligible for the new quota, the people said.

Russian air travellers faced major disruption over the past three days as carriers cancelled, rescheduled and rerouted flights due to the threat from Ukrainian drones. Airlines cancelled 485 flights and delayed 1,900 others from Saturday through Monday morning, Artyom Korenyako, a spokesman for the country’s aviation authority, said in a statement on Telegram.

Russia’s air transportation system had faced “external interference,” he said, adding that all airports had resumed normal operations.

Both Moscow and St. Petersburg were targeted by drones over the weekend, causing air space restrictions. Airports in those cities were among the most impacted by the disruptions. Mobile internet outages also affected passengers at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo airport.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is set to make his first trip to Asia as top US diplomat this week to discuss trade and security with regional counterparts who are looking to avoid President Donald Trump’s looming tariff increases.

Rubio flies to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on Tuesday for a gathering of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. While the US isn’t a full member of ASEAN, American officials often participate in its summits, as do China and Russia.

Rubio “is focused on reaffirming the United States’ commitment to advancing a free, open, and secure Indo-Pacific region,” the State Department said in a statement.

CoreWeave Inc. said it has agreed to buy Core Scientific Inc. in an all-stock deal worth about $9 billion that will allow it to expand its artificial intelligence data center capacity.

The transaction values Core Scientific’s stock at $20.40 per share, according to a statement from CoreWeave on Monday. That represents a 66% premium over the closing price on June 25, the trading day before the Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies were in advanced talks.

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025, according to the statement, pending regulatory approvals. “This acquisition accelerates our strategy to deploy AI and HPC workloads at scale,” said Michael Intrator, CoreWeave’s chief executive officer, using an acronym for the phrase high-powered computing.

The UK is racing to secure a US agreement to make operational a deal to eliminate tariffs on British steel ahead of a Wednesday deadline when American officials could choose instead to raise the levy to 50%.

Eliminating the tariffs is critical to an already struggling British steel industry because the US is the second-biggest export destination for the alloy from the UK.

“We are working with the US to get this over the line as soon as possible,” UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s spokesman, Tom Wells, told reporters on Monday. “The best thing we can do for industry is to get this deal implemented.”

BlackRock Inc. agreed to buy real estate firm ElmTree Funds, which leases built-to-suit commercial properties to single-tenant renters, adding an investor with $7.3 billion in total assets under management.

ElmTree will be integrated into Private Financing Solutions, the new platform created through BlackRock’s $12 billion purchase of credit firm HPS Investment Partners last year. Payment for ElmTree will be primarily in stock, with the potential for additional consideration based on ElmTree’s performance over the next five years, BlackRock said in a statement Monday. The purchase price and other financial details weren’t disclosed.

Founded in 2011, ElmTree has offices in St. Louis, New York, Chicago, Austin, Phoenix and Newport Beach, California, and investments in 122 properties in 31 US states. The deal will allow ElmTree, which focuses on industrial real estate, to expand into new markets as an owner-operator, according to the statement. The transaction is expected to be completed in the third quarter.

US stocks futures fell and the dollar rose, with investors on edge about the potential for more tariffs from the Trump administration.

S&P 500 contracts declined 0.2% with trading set to resume after the July 4 holiday. Tesla Inc. slumped more than 6% in early trading after Elon Musk announced he will form a new political party.

The dollar rose 0.5%, putting the greenback on course for its biggest advance in three weeks. Emerging-market currencies fell, with the South African rand sliding 1%, after US President Donald Trump warned he would add extra tariffs on any country that aligns with “the anti-American policies of BRICS.”

Michael Saylor’s Strategy registered an unrealised gain of $14.05 billion in the second quarter due to a rebound in Bitcoin’s price and a recent accounting change.

The unrealised gain was partially offset by a related deferred tax expense of $4.04 billion, the company said in a US Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Monday.

Nissan Motor Co. plans to sell about $5 billion in debt to help fund Chief Executive Officer Ivan Espinosa’s turnaround of the ailing automaker, part of a broader financing initiative to keep operations on track.

The Japanese carmaker will sell ¥150 billion ($1 billion) of convertible bonds for investment in new products and technologies, the company said on Monday.

Nissan also plans to issue a total of $4 billion in unsecured dollar- and euro-denominated junk bonds for general corporate purposes, including refinancing debt, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be identified as they’re not authorised to speak publicly. The notes are expected to price later this week.

Canadians are becoming less optimistic about their job prospects as the economy struggles to find momentum.

The percentage of Canadians who believe their jobs are “secure” or “somewhat secure” has fallen below 60% for the first time in more than a year, according to polling for Bloomberg News by Nanos Research. About 30% say they’re unsure, the biggest proportion since 2023.

The Canadian labour market has softened, with four straight months of either minimal job growth or outright losses. The unemployment rate was 7% in May, the highest level since 2016 excluding the Covid-19 pandemic period. Employment in manufacturing and other trade-sensitive areas of the economy has been affected by US tariffs.

Blackstone Inc. has agreed to purchase Allegiant Travel Co.’s Sunseeker Resort for about $200 million, far less than the $720 million that the parent of Allegiant Airlines spent building the beleaguered retreat, according to people familiar with the matter.

A deal for Sunseeker could be announced as soon as Monday, said the people, who asked to not be identified because the details are private. Bloomberg News first reported that Blackstone was in talks to buy the resort in June. Representatives for Blackstone and Allegiant declined to comment.

Allegiant has been seeking to offload the 785-room compound for about a year, announcing in July 2024 that it had retained an adviser to explore options for the resort. Allegiant built the Port Charlotte, Florida resort to extend its travel business into hospitality.

However, the project was built over budget and four years behind schedule. Hobbled by the coronavirus pandemic and hurricane damage, the resort has struggled to produce sufficient returns.

The European Union said it’s closing in on a framework trade agreement with the US after the head of the bloc’s executive arm, Ursula von der Leyen, held a call with President Donald Trump on Sunday.

“They had a good exchange,” EU Spokesman Olof Gill told reporters in Brussels Monday. “We’re at the beginning of the end game, at least for an agreement in principle.”

The EU has been rushing to clinch a trade arrangement with Trump before tariffs on nearly all of its exports to the US jump to 50%. Trump has imposed tariffs on almost all US trading partners, saying he wants to bring back domestic manufacturing, needs to pay for a tax-cut extension and stop other countries from taking advantage of the US.

KalVista Pharmaceuticals Inc. shares rose 19% early Monday after the company said it received US Food and Drug Administration approval for its pill for hereditary angioedema, a rare and potentially deadly condition that causes severe swelling throughout the body.

KalVista said last month that regulators had delayed making a decision on its drug due to the agency’s “heavy workload and limited resources” after the FDA told the company it would miss a June deadline for approval.

The drug industry has been on high alert for signs that recent government downsizing is slowing drug approvals. FDA Commissioner Marty Makary has said publicly the agency “will have no problem” reviewing drugs on time.

Signs that US equities are overheating are cropping up everywhere, foreshadowing trouble for the nascent rebound in some of the riskiest stocks.

As the S&P 500 Index roared to a record high in the past month, shares of small-cap companies — which typically carry a higher debt load and are less profitable than their larger counterparts — surged even more.

They handily outpaced bigger peers as investors shed their defensive stance and rushed into more speculative nooks. But history shows that when enthusiasm tips over into euphoria, it’s a bad omen for small caps.

European markets have been open for almost an hour now, and oil and gas stocks are still leading regional losses.

The Stoxx Oil and Gas index was last seen trading 1.3% lower. Oil prices fell after the OPEC+ alliance agreed to a bigger-than-expected production increase.NewsLive TVMarketPopular CategoriesCalculatorsTrending NowLet's Connect with CNBCTV 18Network 18 Group :©TV18 Broadcast Limited. All rights reserved.