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China ramps up Wall Street meetings as Trump inauguration looms

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Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng has met with several U.S. finance executives in the last month as Beijing seeks to build relationships ahead of President-elect Donald Trump’s planned tariffs on China.

He Lifeng is one of China’s four vice premiers, and heads the ruling Chinese Communist Party’s economic and finance committee.

He met with BlackRock Chairman and CEO Larry Fink in Beijing on Dec. 5, and Goldman Sachs President and COO John E. Waldron on Dec. 4, according to state media. That followed a meeting with Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser on Nov. 21, state media said.

“The Chinese are seeking all possible avenues to access those now ascending to power in Washington. The Trump Team,” said Peter Alexander, founder of Shanghai-based consulting firm Z-Ben Advisors. “Back channeling is how China operates, even prefers, when building lines of communications.”

Goldman Sachs said it was aware of the reports. The two other financial firms did not respond to a CNBC request for comment.

Trump has filled his Cabinet picks with at least 10 reported billionaires, including two with a finance-heavy background: hedge fund manager Scott Bessent for treasury secretary and Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick for commerce secretary.

Xi’s cautious tone reflects concerns about exacerbating structural challenges: Longview's McNeal

“I do think the Wall Street folks that are coming into commerce and treasury will serve a moderating role on the trade protectionist side,” said Clark Packard, research fellow at the Cato Institute. “It’s all relative because I do think there’s going to be something protectionist on the trade side. Those voices will be the voices that work to mitigate some of that.”

“Especially at Treasury they’re pretty worried about market reaction,” Packard said. “The one thing that can truly maybe scare Trump away from a really aggressive [policy] would be the market reaction.”

U.S. stocks are on track for a relatively rare second straight year of more than 20% gains. After tumbling early this year, Chinese stocks rebounded after Beijing signaled a shift toward stimulus in late September. Chinese authorities on Monday affirmed that supportive stance in a high-level meeting.

‘Keeping its options open’

With actions such as hosting Wall Street executives and imposing export controls on critical minerals, Beijing is keeping its options open, said Zongyuan Zoe Liu, who is Maurice R. Greenberg senior fellow for China studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. “They are preparing for the worst-case scenario.”

But she cautioned that it’s unlikely that financial institutions can do much to mitigate tariffs and tensions with the U.S. “Business transactions and Wall Street executives, one way or another, they would not give up opportunities in any market as long as it fits into their profile,” Liu said.

Chinese financial media summarized He Lifeng’s meetings with the U.S. executives as sending a signal on Beijing’s willingness to open up the financial sector and attract long-term, foreign institutional investment. Foreign capital inflows are often cast by Chinese state media as a symbol of support for the domestic market.

The Chinese vice premier also met with Invesco President and CEO Andrew Schlossberg in Beijing on Nov. 12, and HSBC Group Chairman Mark Tucker on Nov. 14, according to state media. HSBC said it had nothing to add to the report. Invesco did not respond to a request for comment.

U.S.-China capital markets have been “arguably the most dynamic and inter-connected aspect” of the bilateral relationship in the last two decades, said Winston Ma, adjunct professor at NYU School of Law.

“When the cross-border finance relationship is constructive and cooperative, it could lead to MAP, i.e. mutual assured [prosperity]; otherwise it will be MAD, mutual assured destruction,” Ma said, referring to a Cold War deterrence principle.

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Warren Buffett’s top stock picks come with 15% income bonus in new ETF

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Invest like Buffett: VistaShares CEO on new ETF that follows the investor

In a year that hasn’t been kind to many big-name stocks, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway is standing near the top. Berkshire shares have posted a 17% return year-to-date, while the S&P 500 index is down 6%.

That performance places Berkshire among the top 10% of the U.S. market’s large-cap leaders, and the run has been getting Buffett more attention ahead of next weekend’s annual Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting in Omaha, Nebraska. It’s also good timing for the recently launched VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF (OMAH), which holds the top 20 most heavily weighted stocks in Berkshire Hathaway, as well as shares of Berkshire Hathaway. 

Berkshire is currently the biggest holding in the ETF, at 10.6% of the fund. Other top holdings in the ETF from among the ranks of Berkshire’s biggest bets include Apple, American Express, Kroger, VeriSign, Bank of America, Citigroup, Visa and of course Coca-Cola, a long time favorite of the man known as the Oracle of Omaha.

“It’s a really well-balanced portfolio chosen by the most successful investor the world has ever seen,” Adam Patti, CEO of VistaShares, said in an appearance this week on CNBC’s “ETF Edge.”

Berkshire’s outperformance of the S&P 500 isn’t limited to 2025. Buffett’s stock has tripled the performance of the market over the past year, and its 185% return over the past five years is more than double the performance of the S&P 500.

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Berkshire Hathaway is one of 2025’s top performing stocks.

In addition to this long-term track record of success in the market, Berkshire Hathaway is getting a lot of attention right now for the record amount of cash Buffett is holding as he trimmed stakes in big stocks including Apple, which has proven to be a great strategy. The S&P 500 has experienced extreme short-term volatility since President Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 20. Even after a recent recovery, the S&P is still down 8% since the start of Trump’s second term.

“The market has been momentum driven for many years, the switch has flipped and we’re looking at quality in terms of exposure, and Berkshire Hathaway has performed incredibly well this year, handily outperforming the S&P 500,” said Patti.

Berkshire Hathaway famously doesn’t pay a dividend, with Buffett holding firm over many decades in the belief that he can re-invest cash to create more value for shareholders. In a letter to shareholders in February, Buffett wrote that Berkshire shareholders “can rest assured that we will forever deploy a substantial majority of their money in equities — mostly American equities.”

The lack of a dividend payment has been an issue over the years for some shareholders at Berkshire who do want income from the market, according to Patti, who added that his firm conducted research among investors in designing the ETF. “Who doesn’t want to invest like Buffett, but with income?” he said.

So, in addition to being tied to the performance of Berkshire and the stock picks of Buffett, the VistaShares Target 15 Berkshire Select Income ETF is designed to produce income of 15% annually through a strategy of selling call options and distributing monthly payments of 1.25% to shareholders. This income strategy has become more popular in the ETF space, with more asset managers launching funds to capture income opportunities and more investors adopting the approach amid market volatility.

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More Americans buy groceries with buy now, pay later loans

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People shop for produce at a Walmart in Rosemead, California, on April 11, 2025. 

Frederic J. Brown | Afp | Getty Images

A growing number of Americans are using buy now, pay later loans to buy groceries, and more people are paying those bills late, according to new Lending Tree data released Friday

The figures are the latest indicator that some consumers are cracking under the pressure of an uncertain economy and are having trouble affording essentials such as groceries as they contend with persistent inflation, high interest rates and concerns around tariffs

In a survey conducted April 2-3 of 2,000 U.S. consumers ages 18 to 79, around half reported having used buy now, pay later services. Of those consumers, 25% of respondents said they were using BNPL loans to buy groceries, up from 14% in 2024 and 21% in 2023, the firm said.

Meanwhile, 41% of respondents said they made a late payment on a BNPL loan in the past year, up from 34% in the year prior, the survey found.

Lending Tree’s chief consumer finance analyst, Matt Schulz, said that of those respondents who said they paid a BNPL bill late, most said it was by no more than a week or so.

“A lot of people are struggling and looking for ways to extend their budget,” Schulz said. “Inflation is still a problem. Interest rates are still really high. There’s a lot of uncertainty around tariffs and other economic issues, and it’s all going to add up to a lot of people looking for ways to extend their budget however they can.”

“For an awful lot of people, that’s going to mean leaning on buy now, pay later loans, for better or for worse,” he said. 

He stopped short of calling the results a recession indicator but said conditions are expected to decline further before they get better.  

“I do think it’s going to get worse, at least in the short term,” said Schulz. “I don’t know that there’s a whole lot of reason to expect these numbers to get better in the near term.”

The loans, which allow consumers to split up purchases into several smaller payments, are a popular alternative to credit cards because they often don’t charge interest. But consumers can see high fees if they pay late, and they can run into problems if they stack up multiple loans. In Lending Tree’s survey, 60% of BNPL users said they’ve had multiple loans at once, with nearly a fourth saying they have held three or more at once. 

“It’s just really important for people to be cautious when they use these things, because even though they can be a really good interest-free tool to help you kind of make it from one paycheck to the next, there’s also a lot of risk in mismanaging it,” said Schulz. “So people should tread lightly.” 

Lending Tree’s findings come after Billboard revealed that about 60% of general admission Coachella attendees funded their concert tickets with buy now, pay later loans, sparking a debate on the state of the economy and how consumers are using debt to keep up their lifestyles. A recent announcement from DoorDash that it would begin accepting BNPL financing from Klarna for food deliveries led to widespread mockery and jokes that Americans were struggling so much that they were now being forced to finance cheeseburgers and burritos.

Over the last few years, consumers have held up relatively well, even in the face of persistent inflation and high interest rates, because the job market was strong and wage growth had kept up with inflation — at least for some workers. 

Earlier this year, however, large companies including Walmart and Delta Airlines began warning that the dynamic had begun to shift and they were seeing cracks in demand, which was leading to worse-than-expected sales forecasts. 

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