Commercial mining on the miles-deep Pacific Ocean floor came one step closer to reality with an announcement late Tuesday by the U.S. Interior Department that it would evaluate a request from a California-based company to extract metals off the coast of American Samoa. The move follows an executive order last month that urged government agencies to expedite permits for seabed mining in U.S. territorial waters as well as international waters. Most other nations argue that the United States does not have the legal right to mine the seabed beyond its own territorial waters. Parts of the ocean floor are blanketed by potato-size nodules containing valuable minerals like nickel, cobalt and manganese that are essential to advanced technologies that the United States considers critical to its economic and military security. Supply chains of many of these valuable minerals are increasingly controlled by China. No commercial-scale mining of the seabed has ever taken place. The technological hurdles to seabed mining are high, and there have been serious concerns about the environmental consequences. Yet many countries have been impatient to get started as demand grows for the metals found there. Under a United Nations treaty signed by nearly every country except the United States, mining in international waters is supposed to wait until regulations and environmental protections have been agreed upon. President Trump’s executive order last month stirred outrage across a broad swath of governments and activist groups that said permits issued unilaterally by the U.S. government would be in breach of widely accepted international law. The Interior Department’s announcement on Tuesday pertains to a request from a company called Impossible Metals to move toward mining in U.S. territorial waters. In early April, before the executive order was issued, the company had requested that the government consider granting it access to nearly 30,000 square miles of those waters. Testifying in front of a congressional subcommittee in April, the company’s chief executive, Oliver Gunasekara, said the election of a new, Republican governor in American Samoa last November boded well for their plans. An application made last year by the company to the Interior Department’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management was denied and, shortly thereafter, the previous governor of American Samoa, a Democrat, enacted a moratorium on seabed mining in the territory’s waters. American Samoa, which is around 2,600 miles southwest of Hawaii, is not a U.S. state and has no representation in Congress. It is also the only U.S. territory where people born there are not automatically granted citizenship at birth. “As soon as the executive order came out, that very much directed the different groups to accelerate and prioritize deep-sea mining,” Mr. Gunasekara said in an interview on Wednesday. He added that his company’s request was to explore a zone near the United States’ maritime border with the Cook Islands. “It avoids any existing marine sanctuaries, even though there was a recent executive order that rescinded them,” he said, referring to Mr. Trump’s opening of the Pacific Remote Islands Marine National Monument to commercial fishing in April. For decades, negotiators at the International Seabed Authority, an agency affiliated with the United Nations, have been drafting and redrafting a rule book for deep-sea mining that would cover everything from environmental regulations to royalty payments. Despite a pledge to finalize it by this year, negotiators seemed unlikely to meet that deadline. Nevertheless, anticipating that mining would eventually be allowed, a handful of companies have invested heavily in developing technologies to mine the ocean floor. They include ships with huge claws that would extend down to the seabed, as well as autonomous vehicles attached to gargantuan vacuums that would scour the ocean bottom. Advertisement SKIP ADVERTISEMENT The furthest along is the Metals Company, a Canadian enterprise that, so far, is the only company to apply for a U.S. permit after Mr. Trump’s executive order. Through a U.S.-based subsidiary, the company is seeking to mine in the so-called Clarion-Clipperton Zone, in international waters, about halfway between Hawaii and Mexico, and has spent more than a half-billion dollars preparing to mine. Its application will go through a separate permitting process run by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which is part of the Commerce Department. The Metals Company has developed an extraction technology that resembles a vacuum attached to an autonomous vehicle that would trundle across the seafloor, sending up nodules to a ship through a pipe. The company proposing to mine near American Samoa, Impossible Metals, says it has a machine that will pick up nodules individually and without actually landing on the seafloor. An Interior Department news release said the department would now begin the process of seeking input “from the Indigenous Island community, ocean users, industry stakeholders, government agencies and the public,” in its consideration of whether to grant Impossible Metals request. Mr. Gunasekara said this was only the beginning of a “multiyear process” that he hoped would move from public consultation to exploration to environmental assessments and ultimately a production license.

When it passed in 2022, the Inflation Reduction Act was hailed by Democrats and environmentalists as the most important piece of climate legislation in American history. But today, as House Republicans debate whether to repeal the hundreds of billions of dollars that the law provides for solar panels, electric vehicles and other technologies designed to fight global warming, supporters of the law rarely mention the planet. Instead, the law’s defenders argue that the tax credits for battery factories or wind farms are creating manufacturing jobs around the country and will reduce electricity prices and help the United States to compete in an A.I. race against China. It’s a sign of how quickly climate has faded from the national agenda under President Trump, who has dismissed the risks of global warming and has rooted out any mention of climate change among federal agencies. “We’re no longer talking about the environment,” said Chad Farrell, the founder of Encore Renewable Energy, based in Vermont. “We’re talking dollars and cents.” Mr. Farrell was among the solar industry leaders who met in Washington last week to lobby Congress to preserve many of the law’s clean energy provisions, saying they were essential for the U.S. economy. The fate of the clean energy tax credits is being hotly debated on Capitol Hill. The most recent version of the House Republicans’ far-reaching domestic policy bill would quickly phase out the biggest incentives for technologies like electric vehicles, batteries, wind turbines, solar panels and nuclear reactors and restrict tax breaks for domestic manufacturing. Some conservative Republicans want to entirely repeal the Inflation Reduction Act. On the other side, three dozen Republicans in the House and four in the Senate say they want to preserve at least some incentives, such as those for nuclear power or domestic manufacturing, to protect jobs and bolster U.S. energy security. “We must ensure certainty for current and future energy investments to meet the nation’s growing power demand and protect our constituents from higher energy costs,” Representative Jen Kiggans, Republican of Virginia, wrote in a recent letter joined by 13 colleagues from her party. Ms. Kiggans has been a vocal supporter of a giant wind farm under construction off the coast of her district. In their pitch to lawmakers, many renewable energy companies have cast their industries as essential for achieving national energy dominance, a goal repeatedly mentioned by Mr. Trump. One common argument: America’s demand for electricity is soaring, driven by a boom in A.I. data centers, and it’s difficult to build enough gas-fired power plants to supply all the extra power that the nation needs. Adding more solar, wind and batteries could be the country’s best hope for averting energy shortages, since they are relatively quick to construct, proponents say. “Maybe before it was tie-dye T-shirts and hugging trees, but today we are a mature energy sector and a critical part of energizing America,” said Constantino Nicolaou, the chief executive of PanelClaw, a solar company based in Massachusetts that supplies mounting systems for rooftop solar projects. “Yes, we love the environment, but don’t look at us like the environmentalists,” Mr. Nicolaou said. Other companies warn that thousands of good-paying manufacturing jobs could disappear if Congress repealed the tax credits. Since the Inflation Reduction Act passed, businesses have announced more than $843 billion in clean energy investments, from wind farms in Wyoming to battery factories in Georgia. More than three-fourths of that spending is expected to occur in Republican-controlled districts. If Republicans phase out the tax credits, “nearly 300 U.S. factories — mostly in red states — could close or never open,” said Abigail Ross Hopper, chief executive of the Solar Energy Industries Association, a trade group. On Monday, the solar association released a report estimating that 292,000 jobs and $220 billion in local investments might be lost if Congress ended the tax breaks for solar power, while warning of blackouts and higher electricity bills. The report does not mention climate change. It’s a marked contrast with 2022, when the solar association released an analysis showing that additional solar deployment brought on by the Inflation Reduction Act would offset more than 655 million tons of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas that is driving global warming. Even many environmental groups defending the law now sound like a green-tinged version of the Chamber of Commerce. Repealing the tax credits “means higher gas and electricity costs for struggling families and businesses, tanking the U.S. manufacturing resurgence and ceding leadership to China,” said Sara Chieffo, the vice president of government affairs at the League of Conservation Voters. Other companies, including makers of electric vehicles, are trying to persuade lawmakers that the United States could lose a technology race with China if the law were gutted. “We can’t lose sight of the fact that the automotive industry is global, and consumers all over the world are increasingly preferring electric vehicles for a variety of reasons,” said Michael Tubman, director of federal affairs at Lucid Motors, a start-up manufacturing electric cars in Arizona. “The American auto industry is in fierce competition with foreign competitors, particularly Chinese automakers.” The shift away from focusing on climate change is a throwback to an earlier era of clean energy politics, said Alex Trembath, the deputy director of the Breakthrough Institute, an environmental research organization. For many years, subsidies for new energy technologies like wind, solar and nuclear power had broad bipartisan support and were often renewed under Republican presidents, in part because they were seen as essential to accelerate technological innovation and improve U.S. energy security. That changed during the Biden administration, when Democrats made fighting climate change a top political priority and dramatically expanded the tax credits as part of a push to quickly pivot the U.S. economy away from fossil fuels. “Once all these tax credits started getting described as once-in-a-generation climate policy, that went a long ways toward turning Republicans away,” Mr. Trembath said. But in the wake of Mr. Trump’s victory in the 2024 election, he has written, climate change looks less like a winning issue for Democrats. Whether Republicans are swayed by the economic arguments for the Inflation Reduction Act remains to be seen. Conservative critics have pushed back hard, saying that clean energy subsidies could cost taxpayers trillions of dollars. “The Inflation Reduction Act has ballooned into one of the biggest government boondoggles in history,” said Thomas J. Pyle, president of the American Energy Alliance, a conservative research group focused on energy. “That’s real money that could be returned to taxpayers, fueling private-sector innovation, job creation and consumer-driven growth instead of funneling taxpayer dollars into a narrow, government-directed vision of the economy.” Some Senate Republicans have suggested phasing out the subsidies for wind and solar — on the grounds that those industries are mature and don’t need further help — while maintaining tax credits for earlier-stage technologies like advanced nuclear reactors or enhanced geothermal plants. That could result in more planet-warming emissions. An analysis by the Rhodium Group, a research firm, found that repealing tax credits for electric cars, wind turbines and solar panels could lead to hundreds of millions of tons of extra carbon dioxide in the atmosphere each year by 2035. Yet others say that the broader effect that the tax credits would have on emissions has been overstated. That’s because many solar and wind projects across the country are currently being held up by delays in local permitting or regulations that make it difficult to build large transmission lines, blunting the law’s climate impact. “There are a lot of reforms we could make that would have a much bigger impact on decarbonization than the I.R.A.,” said Devin Hartman, director of energy and environmental policy at the R Street Institute, a center-right think tank. “In some ways the fight over subsidies has hijacked that conversation.” Whatever happens to the Inflation Reduction Act, many supporters say it was a promising attempt at creating a durable climate policy in the United States. Before the law, climate activists often favored restrictions and penalties, such as taxes on emissions from oil, gas and coal. But countries, like Canada and Australia, that enacted such policies later overturned them because they were unpopular. The Inflation Reduction Act was designed to be a “carrot” rather than a “stick,” said Leah Stokes, a professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who helped craft parts of the law. It led to investment, and that has made the policies stickier. “Climate policy is hard,” Ms. Stokes said. “We’re trying to wean ourselves off a product that is represented by the most powerful industry on the planet.” But the tax incentives for clean energy, she added, still have a better shot at surviving “than anything else ever has.” Referring to the law’s fate in Congress, Ms. Stokes said, “It’s not dead yet.”

TAIPEI, Taiwan — The head of American chipmaker Nvidia praised President Donald Trump’s move to modify U.S. curbs on the export of artificial intelligence chips to China, saying Wednesday that the Biden-era controls were a “failure” that had cost his and other U.S. companies billions of dollars in sales. Under former President Joe Biden, the United States rolled out a three-tiered system of export curbs on advanced chips aimed at regulating the global diffusion of AI, blocking China entirely. While Biden said the curbs were necessary to slow China’s development of technology that could have military applications, critics said they could undermine U.S. tech leadership. The Trump administration said last week that it plans to rescind some of those curbs and replace them with its own restrictions. Nvidia’s billionaire chief executive, Jensen Huang, said his company controls 50% of the market in China today, compared with almost 95% at the start of the Biden administration in 2021. “All in all, the export control was a failure,” he told reporters on the sidelines of Computex, a top technology trade show in the Taiwanese capital of Taipei, saying the curbs were based on the “fundamentally flawed” assumption that the U.S. is the only source of AI technology. Huang, 62, said Chinese companies blocked from buying American products had instead turned to local sources such as Chinese tech giant Huawei, and that they had been spurred to make advances with as little outside help as possible. “The local companies are very, very talented and very determined,” Huang said, “and the export control gave them the spirit, the energy and the government support to accelerate their development.”Those companies “would love for us never to go back to China,” he said, adding that China is home to 50% of the world’s AI researchers and has an AI market he estimated would be worth $50 billion by next year. Nvidia said last month that it would write off about $5.5 billion in H20 AI chips it had specifically designed for the China market to comply with previous curbs after the Trump administration said those chips would also be restricted. “I really do hope that the U.S. government recognizes that the ban is not effective and give us a chance to go back and win the market as soon as possible,” Huang said.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk confirmed that the company will have robotaxis on the streets of Austin, Texas, by the end of June. In an interview with CNBC’s David Faber on Tuesday at the company’s headquarters in Austin, Musk said Tesla aims to bring its robotaxis to Los Angeles and San Francisco following the planned Austin debut. Musk said a Tesla robotaxi service will start with about 10 vehicles in Austin, and rapidly expand to thousands of vehicles should the launch go well with no incidents. Since 2016, Musk has been promising Tesla investors, customers and fans that the company is about a year away from delivering a self-driving car that’s capable of transporting passengers safely without human interventions, or a human at the steering wheel. “It’s prudent for us to start with a small number, confirm that things are going well and then scale it up,” Musk said. To start, Tesla has said its robotaxis will be Model Y vehicles equipped with a forthcoming version of FSD (full self driving) known as FSD Unsupervised. Alphabet’s Waymo is currently operating commercial, driverless ride-hailing services in various U.S. markets. On a recent earnings call, Alphabet said Waymo already conducts 250,000 paid trips per week. Musk said Tesla “will geofence” its robotaxis in Austin to start, meaning the company will limit where those Model Y vehicles can drive. But there won’t be a human safety driver in the cars, Musk promised.Tesla employees will be remotely monitoring the fleet, he said. “We’ll be watching what the cars are doing very carefully and as confidence grows, less of that will be needed,” Musk said. Musk has previously claimed Tesla’s “generalized” approach to robotaxis is more ambitious than Waymo’s. Tesla relies on camera-based systems and computer vision primarily instead of sophisticated sensors including lidar and radar. Musk has said those sensors were expensive and could impede high-volume robotaxi production and scaling of a global fleet. “What will actually work best for the road system is artificial intelligence, digital neural nets and cameras,” Musk said on Tuesday. Faber pressed Musk on the political backlash that Tesla has faced in response to Musk’s involvement with the President Donald Trump’s administration, and in German politics. Tesla has faced declining EV sales, reporting a 20% drop in automotive revenue in the first quarter of 2025. Musk attributed the sales decline to the company needing to retool its factories to begin production of a refreshed version of its most popular car, the Model Y. “We can’t make cars if the factories are retooling. But we’ve seen a major rebound in demand at this point,” Musk said, without providing numbers. “When you buy a product, how much do you care about the political views of the CEO or even care what they are?” While remaining at the helm of Tesla and also running SpaceX and xAI, Musk is serving as a key adviser to President Trump after spending nearly $300 million to propel him back to the White House. His holdings in Tesla and SpaceX make Musk the world’s wealthiest individual with an estimated net worth around $376 billion today, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index. Earlier on Tuesday, Musk committed to leading Tesla for the next five years. “Yes, no doubt about that at all,” Musk said in an interview at Bloomberg’s Qatar Economic Forum in Doha

Emerging markets stocks are in the spotlight again as the “sell U.S.” narrative gained fresh momentum, following Moody’s recent downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. The Bank of America heralded emerging markets as “the next bull market” recently. “Weaker U.S. dollar, U.S. bond yield top, China economic recovery…nothing will work better than emerging market stocks,” Bank of America’s team, led by investment strategist Michael Hartnett, said in a note. Similarly, JPMorgan upgraded emerging market equities from neutral to overweight on Monday, citing thawing U.S.-China trade tensions and attractive valuations. A dented confidence in U.S. assets, which kicked into high gear last month marked by a selloff in U.S. Treasurys, equities and greenback, has fueled the bullishness for emerging markets. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index, which tracks large and mid-cap representation across 24 EM countries, is up 8.55% year-to-date. This compares against a 1% climb by the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 across the same period. The difference was more stark in the weeks after April 2, when U.S. President Donald Trump unveiled “reciprocal” tariffs on friends and foes alike. While most benchmarks fell across the board in the immediate days after April 2, the week that followed showed a divergence between emerging market equities and U.S. stocks. Between April 9 to 21, the S&P 500 declined over 5%, while the MSCI Emerging Markets Index rose 7%. Even though U.S. equities and Treasurys rebounded slightly since, the recent Moody’s downgrade has reignited traders’ concerns. On Monday, the U.S. 30-year Treasury yield briefly grazed above 5% to hit levels not seen since November 2023, while U.S. equities also snapped a six-day winning streak on Tuesday. Start of a new rotation? The events that unfolded recently have reinforced the need for more diverse geographical exposure, said Malcolm Dorson, head of the active investment team at Global X ETFs. “After underperforming the S&P over the past decade, EM equities are uniquely positioned to outperform over the next cycle,” he added. “This possible perfect storm stems from a potentially weaker U.S. dollar, extremely low investor positioning, and outsized growth at discounted valuations,” he told CNBC. According to data provided by Dorson, in terms of positioning, many U.S. investors have just 3% to 5% in emerging markets, compared to the 10.5% in the MSCI Global Index, which captures the performance of large and mid-cap companies across 23 developed markets. Emerging markets are also trading at 12 times forward earnings “and at a bigger than typical discount” compared to developed markets, statistics from JPMorgan showed. Among emerging markets, Dorson believes India offers the best long-term growth play and spotlighted Argentina’s cheap valuation. Sovereign upgrades in countries like Greece and Brazil also helped to make them more attractive, he added. “We could be at the start of a new rotation,” said Mohit Mirpuri, equity fund manager at SGMC Capital. “After years of U.S. outperformance, global investors are beginning to look elsewhere for diversification and long-term returns, and emerging markets are firmly back in the conversation,” Mirpuri said. A weakening U.S. dollar — pressured by fiscal concerns and rising debt — has historically supported EM flows and FX stability, said a portfolio manager at VanEck, Ola El-Shawarby. But what could set the current optimism apart from previous emerging market rallies that fizzled out? “We’ve seen EM rallies before that ultimately lost steam, often because they were driven by short-term macro catalysts,” said El-Shawarby. This current cycle could be different because of the combination of deeply discounted valuations, historically low investor positioning, and more durable structural progress across key markets, she said, citing India’s long-term growth story anchored in domestic demand.

The Trump administration has formally accepted a Boeing 747 jet that was gifted to the U.S. by the government of Qatar, the Pentagon said Wednesday. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accepted the luxury plane “in accordance with all federal rules and regulations,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said in a statement to CNBC. The Department of Defense will work to ensure that the jet, which President Donald Trump has said he wants to use as the new Air Force One, fulfills “proper security measures and functional-mission requirements,” Parnell said. The announcement cements the U.S. government’s intention to take the plane, despite experts’ warnings and Democrats’ accusations of bribery. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, Trump called the gift “a great thing” and said Qatar handed over the plane “so they could help us out.” The remarks came during an at times tense debate with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa about Trump’s unsubstantiated claims of a “genocide” against white people in South Africa. “I am sorry I don’t have a plane to give you,” Ramaphosa said at one point. Boeing has spent years working to convert two 747s into the next Air Force Ones in a deal struck during Trump’s first term as president. But the project is years behind schedule, and the planes may not be ready before the end of Trump’s second term. Trump administration officials earlier this year said the president was frustrated with that pace and considering alternatives. “Boeing’s a little late, unfortunately,” Trump said Wednesday. Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg told analysts on his company’s latest quarterly earnings call in April that its Air Force One program is being revised “to allow for an earlier first delivery while maintaining our focus on safety and quality.” It’s far from clear if the 13-year-old Qatari jet, which has been valued at $400 million, could truly offer a quick fix. Experts have said that converting that jet into an Air Force One could cost taxpayers over $1 billion and take years to complete. Qatar’s gift has also raised swells of anger from Democrats and other critics, some of whom have condemned the exchange as effectively a bribe of a U.S. president. “This unprecedented action is a stain on the office of the presidency and cannot go unanswered,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said in a statement Wednesday. Schumer — who has introduced a bill that would bar any foreign aircraft from being used as Air Force One — vowed to continue holding up Trump’s political nominees to the Department of Justice until Americans “get transparency on this shady deal.” Even some Republicans have raised concerns about the potential national security risks and other issues surrounding the gift. “The transaction strikes me as being rife with political espionage, ethical and constitutional problems,” Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Thursday. But Trump has repeatedly defended accepting the plane, saying it would be “stupid” not to accept a free jet and insisting that it is going to the U.S. government, “not to me.”

Shares in Xpeng are set to extend their blistering rally of nearly 80% this year, according to analysts, as the Chinese electric-vehicle maker introduces newer models and moves toward profitability. Xpeng’s shares in Hong Kong surged over 10% Thursday following upbeat earnings and stronger-than-expected revenue forecast for the second quarter. Its shares soared as much as 10.2% to 85.5 Hong Kong dollars ($10.86), and were last trading 7% higher, taking year-to-date gains to 78%. The company is a key player in China’s hypercompetitive EV market, but has struggled to turn a profit amid rising competition and sluggish domestic demand. The Guangzhou-based carmaker’s first-quarter revenue more than doubled from a year earlier, driven by robust sales, according to its earnings released Wednesday. Xpeng said it delivered 94,008 vehicles in the first three months this year, more than four times the sales volume a year earlier. That improved top line helped narrow its net loss for the first quarter to 664 million yuan, compared to 1.37 billion yuan a year ago, and lifted its gross margin to 15.6% for the quarter from 12.9% a year earlier. Analysts expect Xpeng to turn profitable in the fourth quarter this year, thanks to its strong sales momentum and pipeline of new models. “We expect Xpeng to break even in 4Q25 and makes a turnaround from 1Q26,” analysts at UOB Kay Hian said in a note Thursday, expecting “a strong product cycle” to continue driving Xpeng’s sales. The brokerage maintains a buy rating on the stock and pegs target price at 150 Hong Kong dollars — over 76% upside from its current price. “When it comes to profitability, the company expects the gross margin to improve steadily in 2025, supported by higher premium model sales and further economies of scale,” UOB Kay Hian analysts said in the note. Xpeng has launched several new products, including the mass-market brand MONA last August and a renewed flagship model X9, featuring advanced autonomous driving system. The automaker said it aims to begin mass production of vehicles equipped with Level 3 autonomous driving features in China by year-end, a significant upgrade from the currently more common Level 2 systems. For the second quarter, Xpeng said it anticipates a revenue of 17.5 billion yuan to 18.7 billion yuan, compared with consensus forecast of 17.2 billion yuan, according to data compiled by LSEG. It expects to deliver up to 108,000 electric cars in the second quarter, more than double from a year earlier. The launch and delivery of MONA M03 Max model and new versions of its G7 and P7 cars will likely be the next “key catalyst” for Xpeng, Joel Ying, head of China autos at Nomura said in a note, pegging the target price for the U.S.-listed stock at $30. Xpeng’s U.S.-listed shares rose 13% to close at $22.25, powering a year-to-date rally of over 88%. Still, stock are well off its record of more than $72 apiece hit in November 2020, according to LSEG data. Rival BYD has seen shares in Hong Kong surge over 74% so far this year, Li Auto has risen more than 22%, while NIO has lost over 11%.

It’s one bad headline after another coming from the White House these days. Just as the tariff-related turmoil rocking markets subsided — and only temporarily, since the clock is still ticking on the pause on “reciprocal tariffs” — fears of ballooning U.S. debt are sparking another broad sell-off in markets. This time, investors are wary because President Donald Trump’s tax bill is projected to add $3 trillion to $5 trillion to the U.S. debt, reported Reuters, citing nonpartisan analysts. A fiscally challenged U.S. means investors will demand higher returns to hold the country’s debt. Indeed, Treasury yields jumped Wednesday. The 30-year Treasury bond yield crossed the 5% level for the second time this week and the 10-year traded at 4.61%, the highest since February. While rising yields mean bond prices drop, they also promise higher returns at potentially lower risks, dulling the allure of stocks. Under pressure from spiking Treasury yields — which mean elevated borrowing costs for companies and consumers — U.S. markets sold off Wednesday, a sharp reversal from the rally beginning May 12 which gave the S&P 500 a six-day win streak. Unlike tariffs, which Trump seems to be able to conjure or dismiss unilaterally at a wave of his hand, a tax bill needs to pass through the different layers of the government and be agreed on by fractious politicians. It’s hard to imagine a “Trump put” happening here. What you need to know today Sell-off in U.S. markets U.S. markets tumbled Wednesday on worries over the country’s deteriorating fiscal health. The S&P 500 lost 1.61%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 1.91% and the Nasdaq Composite gave up 1.41%. Treasury yields spiked, with the 30-year yield hitting 5.085%, the highest since October 2023, while the 10-year yield traded at 4.607%, a level not seen since February. Threat of U.S. debt widening The U.S. debt-and-deficit situation is bad and facing real prospects of getting worse, triggering a high-profile credit rating downgrade from Moody’s and another selling stampede in stocks and bonds, writes CNBC’s Jeff Cox. If U.S. President Donald Trump’s “big, beautiful” spending bill passes, there are concerns the U.S. deficit could widen even more and keep Treasury yields high. Bitcoin surpasses previous high Elsewhere in markets, the pan-European Stoxx 600 index closed mostly flat. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 ticked up 0.06% amid data showing the country’s annual inflation rate heating up to a higher-than-expected 3.5% in April from 2.6% in March. Bitcoin prices touched a new high of $109,857, breaking its January record. OpenAI snaps up Jony Ive’s startup OpenAI said in a blog post Wednesday that it’s buying former Apple Chief Design Officer Jony Ive’s artificial intelligence devices startup io for about $6.4 billion in an all-equity deal. OpenAI said it’s paying $5 billion in the transaction, as it already owns 23% of the company. The deal brings OpenAI into the world of hardware, and underscores the growing sense in Silicon Valley that smart AI assistants could upend the gadget world. Hinge Health prices IPO Hinge Health priced its IPO at $32 per share on Wednesday, at the top end of the expected range. At the IPO price, Hinge Health is worth about $2.6 billion, though that number could be higher on a fully diluted basis. That’s down significantly from a private market valuation of $6.2 billion in October 2021. The company uses software to help patients treat acute musculoskeletal injuries, chronic pain. [PRO] Boeing can deliver: Etihad Abu Dhabi’s Etihad Airways says it can navigate the turbulence surrounding Boeing’s delivery delays, even as it doubles down on a major wide-body order and a multibillion-dollar fleet overhaul. Here’s why the gulf carrier is confident in working with the embattled American aircraft manufacturer. And finally... Emerging markets said to see the next bull run as the ‘sell U.S.’ narrative gains ground Emerging markets stocks are in the spotlight again as the “sell U.S.” narrative gained fresh momentum, following Moody’s recent downgrade of the U.S. credit rating. “Weaker U.S. dollar, U.S. bond yield top, China economic recovery … nothing will work better than emerging market stocks,” Bank of America’s team, led by investment strategist Michael Hartnett, said in a note. Similarly, JPMorgan upgraded emerging market equities from neutral to overweight on Monday, citing thawing U.S.-China trade tensions and attractive valuations. Erosion of confidence in U.S. assets, with a sell-off in U.S. Treasurys, equities and greenback, has fueled the bullishness for emerging markets.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said overnight that U.S. chip export controls are a “failure” and warned that the restrictions are doing more damage to American business than to China. Huang said in a news conference at Computex, an artificial intelligence trade show in Taiwan, that the policies have cut the AI chip leader’s China market share from 95% to 50% and motivated Beijing to make its own chips faster. Huang’s comments came as the truce between the U.S. and China over tariffs and semiconductors continues to be delicate. The Chinese Commerce Ministry responded to the Trump administration’s recent chip policy change on Monday, calling the U.S. policy “overreaching” and “bullying,” and demanding the White House “correct its mistakes.” “The U.S. abuses export control measures, imposing unjustified restrictions on Chinese chip products and even interfering with Chinese companies’ use of domestically produced chips within China,” the ministry said. The White House scrapped the tiered “AI Diffusion Rule” rolled out by former President Joe Biden in January and promised to fully replace it in the future. Nvidia is stuck in the middle, with Huang maintaining relationships with both sides in a deepening tech cold war. In Saudi Arabia last week, President Donald Trump called Huang a “friend” and touted Nvidia’s massive AI investment. Huang accompanied Trump on the Middle East trip, a prominent representative of the U.S.′ global technology power. But Huang has also kept close ties to China and praised the country’s tech capabilities. Nvidia is acquiring a new space for its employees in Shanghai, though the company said it is not sending any intellectual property or graphics processing unit designs there. Huang told lawmakers in Washington in April that China is quickly gaining ground on the U.S. in AI. “China is right behind us,” Huang said. “We are very close. Remember this is a long-term, infinite race.” He also singled out the capabilities of Huawei, which is reportedly developing its own advanced chip to rival Nvidia. “They’re incredible in computing and network technology, all these essential capabilities to advance AI,” Huang said. “They have made enormous progress in the last several years.” Even with the U.S. and China relationship on rocky footing, Huang told senior Chinese officials in April that his company would “unswervingly serve the Chinese market.” Nvidia’s balancing game continues, reshaping chips to stay compliant and straddling commercial and political fault lines. Huang’s warning is clear: if the U.S. doesn’t rethink its approach, it could lose the Chinese market and its edge in the global AI race.

The big story Just a week after a breakthrough in U.S.-China trade tensions, neither side can yet be confident that the other is holding up their end of the bargain. “These 90 days won’t be smooth,” Liu Weidong, research fellow at a state-affiliated think tank, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ Institute of American Studies, told me this week. That’s according to a CNBC translation of his Mandarin-language remarks. He predicts elevated uncertainty and smaller steps next, given the already-large breakthrough, as the U.S. and China each try to feel the other out towards a middle ground. The posturing has already begun. China’s Ministry of Commerce on Wednesday warned that it would take legal action against those involved in assisting or implementing measures to curb the usage of advanced semiconductors from China. It follows an earlier accusation by the same ministry on Monday that blamed the U.S. for undermining trade talks with a Huawei chip warning last week — although the U.S. Bureau of Industry and Security had actually toned down its language and dismissed a more restrictive Biden-era plan on chips. Many in the U.S. are also concerned that China isn’t relaxing rare earth export controls, another area in which China dominates the supply chain. That’s despite the joint statement’s vague description of how China would “suspend or remove the non-tariff countermeasures taken against the United States since April 2, 2025.” “I do think Washington was expecting the export controls on that group of rare earths to be lowered, permitting exports in a relatively unrestricted way,” said Scott Kennedy, senior adviser and trustee chair in Chinese Business and Economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C. “If it turns out that, in fact, that is not the result, the U.S. will probably conclude that China is in violation of the agreement,” he said. “We could see a re-escalation sooner rather than later.” While the White House has yet to respond to a CNBC request for comment, a step back reveals ambiguity on China’s side. But are the rare earth export controls part of China’s countermeasures to U.S. tariffs? That’s up for debate. An April 4 document from China’s commerce ministry and customs agency announcing the export controls did not explicitly label them as such. While China did pause restrictions on 28 U.S. entities that were slapped with export controls on critical minerals, the ministry has made several public statements about strengthening export controls on critical minerals. “Given the comprehensive and competitive nature of bilateral relations, the current truce — while focused on trade—can easily be undermined by export controls,” said Yue Su principal economist, China, at The Economist Intelligence Unit. “While rhetorical posturing is unlikely to undermine the 90-day truce, China may well recalibrate its export control regime in a measured response to U.S. actions,” she said. The Chinese commerce ministry on Sunday also announced duties of up to 74.9% on imports of an engineering plastic from the U.S., Europe, Japan and Taiwan. Trump-Xi talk? U.S. President Donald Trump last week told Fox News he is open to a call with Chinese President Xi Jinping, or even a trip to China. But Beijing hasn’t dropped any hints. “I’d be surprised if the two step into the middle of these issues right now with so much unclear,” Kennedy said. The new U.S. Ambassador to China, David Perdue, arrived in Beijing on Thursday, slightly more than two weeks after being confirmed by the Senate. He was previously the head of Asia for U.S. packaged consumer goods company Sara Lee. One of Perdue’s first social media posts called for “strong actions” on fentanyl. He said on X that, together with U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, they were “meaningfully engaged with the Chinese on next steps to stop this dangerous situation.” The U.S. has left in place 20% in tariffs imposed earlier this year over China’s alleged role in the fentanyl crisis. The joint statement last week said the U.S. and China would establish a mechanism for talks about economic and trade relations, but neither side has specified when the next one would occur. Liu, who helped author a report in February with The Carter Center about bilateral cooperation, emphasized the overall focus of the current talks is trade rather than tech. He expects that China could eventually agree to buy more U.S. agriculture and energy products — given the perception that pressuring farmers can influence Trump.