Finance

Trade war has no winners, China’s vice premier warns, as Trump threatens tariffs

Published

13 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Business Finance News

Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang speaks during COP29 on Nov. 12, 2024.

Sopa Images | Lightrocket | Getty Images

BEIJING — Chinese Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang warned there are “no winners” in a trade war, as the world’s second-largest economy faces the possibility of tariffs under the freshly-inaugurated administration of Donald Trump.

“Protectionism leads no where. [A trade war has no winners,” Ding said Tuesday, according to an official English translation. He was speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

The vice premier began his address largely by referencing Chinese President Xi Jinping’s speech at Davos in 2017, which took place just days before Trump headed to the White House to begin his first term.

After his second inauguration on Monday, Trump said the U.S. could levy tariffs on Mexico and Canada as soon as February. As for China, the returning U.S. president indicated tariffs could be a way to pressure the country into forcing Beijing-based ByteDance to sell TikTok, whose future availability in the U.S. is now in question.

“If we wanted to make a deal with TikTok, and it was a good deal, and China wouldn’t approve it, then I think ultimately they’d approve it, because we’d put tariffs on China,” Trump said. “I’m not saying I would, but you certainly could do that.”

Ding, who said he was attending Davos for the second time, is one of China’s four vice premiers. China economy has struggled with lackluster consumption and a real estate slump. Despite this, the country’s GDP officially grew by 5% last year after a flurry of stimulus announcements starting in late September.

This breaking news story is being updated.

Finance

NFLX, UAL, IBKR and more

Published

3 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Business Finance News

Finance

David Einhorn says we have reached the ‘Fartcoin’ stage of the market cycle

Published

5 hours ago

January 21, 2025

Business Finance News

David Einhorn, President at Greenlight Capital, speaking at the 14th CNBC Delivery Alpha Investor Summit in New York City on Nov. 13th, 2024.

Adam Jeffery | CNBC

Greenlight Capital’s David Einhorn thinks speculative behavior in the current bull market has ascended to a level beyond common sense.

“We have reached the ‘Fartcoin’ stage of the market cycle,” Einhorn wrote in an investor letter obtained by CNBC. “Other than trading and speculation, it serves no other obvious purpose and fulfills no need that is not served elsewhere.”

A crypto token called “fartcoin” exploded in popularity as the re-election of Donald Trump unleashed a storm of animal spirits on Main Street. The meme coin is now edging towards a $2 billion market value, surpassing many U.S.-listed companies.

More meme coins have emerged since the inception of fartcoin. President Donald Trump launched $TRUMP, a meme coin built on the Solana platform. Its market cap over the weekend climbed past $14 billion. The coin at one point was down more than 20% over the past 24 hours, but it has since cut its losses to around 3%. Trump’s wife Melania also unveiled a coin.

“Nothing stops the launch of many more tradable coins,” Einhorn said. “Perhaps we are leaving the Fartcoin stage of the market and entering the Trump (and Melania) memecoin stage. It’s anyone’s guess as to what will happen next, but it feels like it’s going to be wild.”

Einhorn’s letter comes as investors drive equities higher, buoyed by expectations of lower taxes and deregulation from the second Trump administration. On Tuesday, the day after the inauguration, the Dow Jones Industrial Average rallied more than 400 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite climbed 0.8% and 0.7%, respectively.

Shorting leveraged bitcoin ETFs

Greenlight took advantage of the craziness around crypto during the fourth quarter by betting against some popular ETFs linked indirectly to bitcoin.

The two funds the firm focused on were the T-Rex 2X Long MSTR Daily Target ETF (MSTU) and the Defiance Daily Target 2X Long MSTR ETF (MSTX). Those funds use derivatives to try to achieve two-times the daily returns of MicroStrategy, a software company that has turned itself into a bitcoin treasury vehicle in recent years.

The funds have at times struggled to achieve that goal due to MicroStrategy’s volatility and little supply of the derivatives most easily used to get the leveraged returns.

The letter said Greenlight took short positions against those funds during the quarter, partially offset by owning MicroStrategy stock in an arbitrage trade that was a “material winner.”