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This is the Blueberg Debacurate podcast. Good morning, It's find it the fourth of July. I'm Caroline Hepkitt in London.
And I'm Stephen Caroline Brussels. Coming up today, Donald Trump says the US will send letters to trading partners from today with new tarif rates as high as seventy percent as the EU remains confident of a deal.
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessen dismisses concerns over the dollars reserve status in an interview with Bloomberg.
Plus chipping away at tradition. Scotland's golf industry finds itself in the rough as elite courses eclipse local clubs.
Let's start with a roundup of our top stories.
US President Donald Trump says new unilateral tarifrates will range from ten to seventy percent as his ninth of July deadline for deals approaches. Speaking to reporters of Board Air Force One, the President said his administration would begin sending letters with the new rates to trading partners from today, with the levies taking effect on the first of August.
Well, we're going to start sending letters out to various countries starting tomorrow. Will probably have ten or twelve go out tomorrow and over the next few days. I think by the ninth they'll be fully covered, and they'll range in value from maybe sixty or seventy percent tariffs to ten and twenty percent tariffs.
However, the US President wouldn't be drawn on the rates each country would receive or which countries would be the first to receive letters.
Well, you're going to.
See tomorrow, rather give it tomorrow. But we have probably twelve ten to twelve tomorrow, and then after that we'll be sending ten or twelve a day, and as we get along, as we get to the smaller countries, we're pretty much going to keep the tariffs a same.
President Trump's comments aligned with his previous threat that if countries failed to reach deals with the US before next week's deadline, he would simply pose rates on them. So far, the Trump administration has announced deals with the UK and Vietnam, and agreed to a truce with China that saw the world's two largest economies eased hit for tat tariffs.
Well, many major trading partners, such as Japan, South Korea, and the European Union are still working to finalize tariff deals. EU Commissioned President Osla Vondelian told reporters yesterday that the block is aiming for an agreement in principle with the United States by July ninth, as an agreement in detail
covering such a large trading relationship wouldn't be feasible. The comments came as Bloomberg learned that European companies including Mercedes Benz and LVMH are pushing for a quick trade deal with the US to avoid tariffs and protect their interests. Meanwhile, President Trump has expressed optimism about reaching an agreement with India, but has spoken harshly about the prospects of an accord with Japan.
China intends to cancel part of a two day summit with the European Union later this month, in the latest sign of a strain between Beijing and Brussels. The EU Commissioned President Ursula Vonderline European Council President Antonio Costa had planned to meet Hi Jinping in Beijing before traveling to Central China the next day for a business summit.
The meeting will now just be one day in Beijing.
The two sides have long standing disagreements over the war in Ukraine, Chinese industrial policy, and an unbalanced trading relationship. China's recent export controls on rare earth magnets have come the detriment of European industries. Bloomberg reported last month of the two sides had also canceled the flagship EU China High Level Economic and Trade Dialogue.
US Treasury search Scott Bessent dismissed the idea that the dollar's recent declines raise concerns about its status as the world's reserve currency. The greenback had its worst first half of a year since nineteen seventy three, with the Dollar index seeing a slide of almost eleven percent. That's led Chinese and European policymakers to one if the global financial system could move away from dependence on the dollar. Scott bess End disagrees.
The price of the dollar has nothing to do with a strong dollar policy.
It meant many times.
Over since World War Two, the demise of the dollar as reserve currency has been predicted.
And I think once again the skept is going to be wrong.
Scott Bessend. They're speaking to Bloomberg. The Treasury Secretary added that if the euro hits one twenty against the dollar, Europeans are going to quote to be squawking that it's too strong.
President Trump secured final passage of his signature three point four trillion dollar tax bill following a bruising campaign to win over Republicans in Congress. The non partisan Congressional Budget Office projects the legislation will add three point four trillion dollars to US deficits over the next decade with tax cuts for wealthier Americans. It also cuts Medicaid health insurance for the poor and disabled people by nearly one trillion dollars,
as well as food stamps and college student loan. Here's the moment. The bill passed by just four votes in the House. On this vote, the Yaser two eighteen the Laser two fourteen.
The motion is adopted.
The legislation now goes to the President, who says he plans to sign the bill in a ceremony at the White House at four pm in Washington today. The fierce partisan battle to shape public perceptions of the measure is likely to intensify in the coming months.
Here In the UK, Chancellor chel Reeves stressed her commitment to fiscal discipline after a market's sell off sparked by fears her position was in danger. Reeves admits that she was clearly upset in the House of Commons earlier this week, after cameras showed her crying on the front bench. The chancellors has insisted that it was because of an issue in her personal life unrelated to politics.
I happened to be on the camera when I had a tough day. But today is a new day and I'm just getting on with the job. In the first quarter of this year, we had the fastest growing economy in the G seven. Wages have risen by more in the first ten months of this Labor government than they did in the first ten years of the Conservative government. Is this job easy? Is it easy to turn around the economy? No, it's not.
It is tough.
Beeves's public appearance comes as she now has to grapple with a new fiscal hole created by her own party. The five billion pound u turn in welfare cars means that she will very likely have to either raise taxes or borrow more in her autumn budget.
Contributes from the footballing world have continued for Liverpool footballer Diogo Jotta, who died in a car crash alongside his brother in Spain yesterday. Police are investigating the possibility that the Lamborghini they were in left the road because of a tire blowout while overtaking. Twenty eight year old Jota played a key role in Liverpool's recent Premier League triumph and portugal ze way for Nations League success. FIFA president Jianny and Fantino says he'll be greatly missed.
Fantastic person, great son, husband, father, as well. Tragic loss from FIFA side, my site, the whole global football family.
FIFA President Jianny and Fantino's tributes were echoed by Christiano Ronaldo, who said he's sending his Portugal teammate Diogo Jiota's family all the strength in the world.
And those are our top stories for you this morning. Let's have a look at the markets in terms of equities. We're sliding now for eurostocks. Fifty futures down four tens of one percent, s and P five hundred emni futures also down three tens of one percent. President Trump ramping up tariff tensions. We've had more statements just in recent minute. In terms of other markets moving the blue bag Dollar
spot indexes week are two tenths of one percent. Remember there is no cash treasury trading today the public holiday in the United States. Gold is also up by almost half of one percent this morning. This as the MSCI Asia Pacific indexes down two tenths of one percent.
In a moment, will bring you the latest on the countdown to Donald Trump's trade deadline. Plus my life on the fairways of Scotland's golf courses isn't all smooth. But another story that caught her eye this morning. Carol, I don't know if you've ever dreamed about drifting off into the corporate sunset with a cushy job on a board somewhere,
but that dream of currently is over. Yeah, I mean it's I would say that the thought had perhaps crossed my mind for future stages of my life, the Act three or four coming down the line, But Beth cod from bloober Coquinian says give up basically on that dream. These days, being on a board, she says, is more like a cold shower. The era of rubber stamping and phoning it
in is over. She references a period during COVID where board meetings turned into emergency calls several times a month, and she says the pace hasn't slowed down since you've got executives leaving. So you've got boards getting involved in finding new leaders for big companies. You've got activist investors circling in a lot of companies as well, questions over how a company is going to approach issues around DEI or ESG, for example. Then add the geopolitics of that
as well. So being on a board has turned out to be a very busy job as well. Also, I quite like this fact. There's a lot more tension apparently on boards. To a survey by PwC found that nearly half of directors wanted to replace at least one of their peers on the board as well. So apparently, even when you're in the room, not everyone as friends.
Absolutely. Yeah, She does say that it could be of course good for corporate governance, which you know is also a factor here, but that there should also be and this is a kind of growing movement as well, that there should be better on boarding, better training if you want to be a director. I mean there's also liability, you know, when things go wrong. Directors have a lot of responsibilities, so maybe that that should become sort of a more formalized structure. But yeah, it was a really
great piece. Beth Koch from Blue Big Opinion.
Well, that's bringing more in our top story. Now, just five days to go until Donald trump tariff pause deadline. The US Prizeman has been giving more details about what countries should expect to happen after that. Our senior Robel Ferries is with us now for more. Bill Donald Trump, we've been hearing from him just in the past hour or so talking about what will happen after July ninth. Letters going out to countries from today. Is this better or worse than we had expected?
Well, I think it's going to depend on what that letter says, depending on which country you're in. I mean, Trump landed in Washington on Air Force one and said he'd start sending out ten or twelve letters to countries and at the rates that the tariff rates that countries will have to pay will be up to possibly seventy percent. So I think that is a worst case scenario for just about any country out there.
At this point.
Of course, there's been a lot of scrutiny of the few details we have on this Vietnam deal. That was reached with a twenty percent tariff for Vietnam's exports to the US and a forty percent sent tariff for goods that were shipped transshipped through Vietnam. So I think there's going to be you know, a lot of countries were hoping that maybe they could get a better deal than Vietnam, something maybe between ten and twenty percent. I think to
hear seventy percent is going to be alarming. The other thing that Donald Trump said when he landed in Washington was that countries will start paying those tariffs on August first, which does lead me to wonder whether there is a little wiggle room between July ninth and August first for some countries to try to work a better deal. We'll have to see how that plays out.
Yeah, I mean, so father are only three framework deals that have been announce so we're told that there are more coming. So who are the likely countries to get across the line? I mean seems to be a bit of a guessing game.
It really is.
I mean, you know, if we took this process back a month or two, we heard repeatedly that Japan was near the front of the front of the queue. In terms of getting some kind of an agreement, and things seem to be going well. It's just been in the bat last ten days or so, we've heard the President really critical of Japan and their their rice and autos policy, so they perhaps they've fallen back. Maybe they'll just get
a letter. India, we know that their negotiators have stayed in Washington longer to work on a deal that's a very complicated pact. It's another country that might get more of a framework and an agreement to continue on. But then there's a lot of countries that fall kind of below that radar and might be thinking, you know, maybe what Vietnam got is the same thing that we're going to get if we're in Southeast Asia. So those are the kind of the countries we're looking for. I'd say
South Korea is on that list as well. And the EU, of course, there's been some more positive signals between the US and the EU and the past week.
Yeah, well, let's talk a little bit about that.
I mean, e's Levanderlin talking about she expects there to be an agreement in principle by the deadline. Marshaftovitch was in Washington yesterday. What is the latest that we're hearing about those negotiations.
Well, you know, the EU was at one point facing a flat fifty percent tariff. There's been a lot more talk about perhaps like a different levels for different products type of things, so much more nuanced agreement. That's one of those ones that I think is also, like India,
very complex. There's obviously it's the biggest US trading relationship there is, so I think there's talk about, you know, perhaps some goods like Bourbon might be taken off the EU's retaliatory list if they get perhaps a better deal from the US. But the framework you're talking about, that's what we saw with the UK. It's generally what we saw with China. I would expect it would fall the EU deal would fall in there where we get some outlines, but perhaps talks continue after next week.
Meanwhile, President Trump is due to sign his tax bill into law later today. How big a win is it and what does that actually mean for the US economy.
It's a big police victory for Donald Trump. This has basically been his only signature piece of legislation that he's talked about since taking office. It includes, I mean some huge priorities. It includes an extension of his twenty seventeen tax cuts. It includes an increase in the debt ceialing limit that the US was set to hit in August, so that basically takes that off the table for markets.
But it also includes a lot of things like increased money for border protection and then cuts to Medicaid and who qualifies for that health insurance program. So it really is going to be a big overhaul of the US economy and the way business has been done. In terms of what comes next, He's gotten a lot of his legislative priorities. There's still a budget that will have to come later this year.
Okay, both fairies, our senior editor, thank you very much for joining us.
Well, now I want to talk about golf in Scotland. The game is traditionally more accessible than in the US or in England, but for dozens of small clubs away from the glitz of maybe Royalty or President Trump's own two resorts, the ones that aren't on the golf tourism routes, rising costs and less visibility are making life tough. Bloomberg's James Ludden joins US now from Edinburgh for more on
this really interesting story. James the business of sports. Scotland is the home of golf, where it is a game for the masses. How big an industry is it in Scotland.
Well, it's a key part of tourism, which is in turn key for the Scottish economy. It was tourism alone is worth about eleven billion pounds to the Scottish economy. But when it comes to golf, numbers are kind of hard to pin down. But there was one study very recently that looked into the town of Saint Andrews, which some of your listeners might know, is the symbolic home of golf. Just that one little corner of southeast Scotland that is worth three hundred and seventeen million pounds to
the economy. So if you extrapolate that across the broader country, yeah, it's worth an awful lot more than that. But there's also key that is it's a part of the national culture. That's why it is such a big deal.
So what's happening then for the smaller clubs versus the perhaps very well known courses you mentioned.
Yeah, so the smaller clubs, you know, the problem they've got, like most most businesses, really is to do with cost. If you think you are a relatively smaller club, you've got to think you have payroll taxes going up, You've got fertilizer costs going up. You know, how many times do you send out your lawmowner to go and cut the greens? Is it once a day? Is it twice a week? Every time you send out a person to cut the fairways or cut the greens, that's going to
cost money. So you've got to work out those of costs. They do add up. And then at the top end of the equation, if you're not going to compete act you know with the big boys like Saint Andrews or you know, more relevantly possibly with the Trump courses at Turnbury and on the East coast also by Aberdeen, if you're not going to compete with them directly on price, you've got to think we've got to play pretty canny to make sure that well our business is sustainable. And
that's really where the issue is. There is what five hundred and fifty also courses dotted around the country, and yeah, that's a lot of golf acreage and playing numbers, but two hundred thousand here in Scotland and of those two hundred thousand, only a small proportion is going to prepare to pay what three hundred quid plus to play at
Trump or what have you. And you know, if let's say, so let's say, if you decide on the fly, you know what, I want to go and play at Trump Turnbury today on the West coast, if you haven't got a package of like a combination or some sort of deal, you are going to be forking out something like one thousand pounds just to knock a very small white ball around the Scottish links, which for the historically fairly frugal Scott's person is not really an option.
Yes, that's a yeah, one thousand pounds to play would be yeah, perhaps expensive. I wondered, James, this is such an interesting story. I did not know that there were so many golf courses frankly in Scotland. Do you play? Why did you write about this? And also is golf increasingly a skill needed for business? I just wonder that, obviously, because you've mentioned President Trump's courses, is golf you know a huge deal in business?
Still it can be. I mean, I think about ten to fifteen years ago, is very much the thing. It's maybe not quite so much as it was. But having said that, the forgive if I get is wrong the president or Prime Minister of Finland. He spent time playing golf with Trump at a recent visit, because he played in his youth and he was able to compete with Trump if you're like on a level playing field. So it does have its upside. Certainly, Yes, I do play.
I don't play it particularly well. I find it immensely frustrating, but also great fun and a lot of it is also about the nineteenth hold, of course, which is equally important.
Sometimes this is Bloomberg Daybreak Europe.
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