Trump Cuts Food Tariffs on Beef, Coffee, Tomatoes as Prices Soar

Political

Economic

Summary:

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer teased the plan Friday, saying that it fits in with Trump’s broader strategy to create tariff exemptions for key goods and sectors.

President Donald Trump issued an order on Friday reducing tariffs on beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, a move aimed at lowering costs on groceries as the administration faces pressure from voters to cut prices on everyday goods.

The exemptions would reduce trade levies on the commodities, which the White House said can’t be produced in the US in sufficient quantity to meet domestic demand. Hundreds of food products, including coconuts, nuts, avocados and pineapples were among the products listed by the administration for exemption from tariffs. The tariff breaks are backdated to take effect at 12:01 a.m. New York time on November 13.

The move comes as Trump has pivoted to focusing on affordability measures as voters are growing increasingly wary of the economy under his leadership. It is also a tacit acknowledgment that the president’s tariff policies have added to price pressures on US consumers.

A White House official, who requested anonymity to speak about the executive order, said earlier Friday that the president is following through on his pledge to negotiate trade deals and then adjust levies as needed.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer teased the plan Friday, saying that it fits in with Trump’s broader strategy to create tariff exemptions for key goods and sectors.

“Now is the right time to, you know, to release some of these items the president said he was going to release,” Greer said. “This is a natural outgrowth of exactly what the present signaled, and that’s what he’s doing today.”

Trump and senior US officials have pushed back on criticism that his trade policies have increased the cost of living but acknowledge the need to do more to reduce high prices that have frustrated voters for years. Trump has regularly praised the merits of tariffs, saying he believes the import taxes are offset in part by sellers’ price reductions, blunting the effect on consumers.

Source: Bloomberg

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Manuel

Economic

The Labor Department will release its numbers on September hiring and unemployment next Thursday, a month and a half late, marking the beginning of the end of a data drought caused by the 43-day federal government shutdown.

The statistical blackout meant that the Federal Reserve, businesses, policymakers and investors have largely been in the dark about inflation, job creation, GDP growth and other measures of the U.S. economic health since late summer.

Thomas Simons and Michael Bacolas at Jefferies, a financial firm, wrote in a commentary Friday that over 30 reports from the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Commerce Department's Bureau of Economic Analysis and Census Bureau were delayed by the political standoff.

The Labor Department did not release its weekly report on the number of Americans signing up for unemployment benefits for seven straight weeks. That jobless claims report is seen as a potential early indicator of where the labor market is headed.

The Labor Department did release its consumer price index for September — the most popular measurement of inflation — nine days late on Oct. 24. The government made an exception for that report because of its urgency: It is used to calculate the annual cost of living adjustment for tens of millions of Americans receiving Social Security and other federal benefits.

The interruption of federal economic statistics came at an awkward time. President Donald Trump’s policies — sweeping, ever-changing import taxes and massive deportations of people working in the United States illegally — are creating uncertainty about the economic outlook.

And the economy has sent conflicting signals: Economic growth looked solid at midyear and unemployment has been low. But job growth has lost momentum, and inflation has remained stubbornly above the Federal Reserve’s 2% target, partly because of the impact of Trump’s tariffs.

Jefferies' Simons expects the September employment report to show that employers added 65,000 jobs that month — unimpressive, but up from a meager 22,000 in August. He figures that unemployment remained at a low 4.3%.

Investors and policymakers hungry for data

The data cutoff has caused consternation on Wall Street and deepened divisions among Fed officials over whether to cut interest rates for a third straight time at their next meeting in December.

This week, some Fed policymakers have suggested that a lack of data is one reason they may support holding off on another rate cut.

As a result, fresh reports on jobs and inflation in the coming weeks and months will carry huge weight at the Fed because new numbers could help resolve disagreements between those who support another interest rate reduction and those who are opposed.

Even with the government reopened, however, it could take a few more weeks for the data to fully recover. Earlier this week, Kevin Hassett, a top White House economist, said only a part of October’s jobs report — originally scheduled to be released Nov. 7 — will eventually be released.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics will likely have enough data from businesses to calculate how many jobs were gained or lost last month. Much of that is submitted electronically. But a separate survey of households, which is used to calculate the unemployment rate, didn’t take place during the shutdown.

As a result, for the first time in 77 years, the BLS may not calculate an unemployment rate for the month of October.

Other White House officials have previously said there also won’t be an October inflation report, because the data couldn’t be gathered due to the government shutdown. That will pose a challenge for the Fed, which is seeking to determine whether inflation is headed back to 2%.

The data interruption occurred just a couple of months after Trump fired the director of the BLS, Erika McEntarfer, after it produced employment figures Aug. 1 that he didn’t like. They showed only modest job gains in July and sharply smaller increases in May and June than previously estimated.

Still, economists said the upcoming reports should be free from bias. Currently, there are no political appointees at the agency, after Trump withdrew his nominee to head the BLS Sept. 30.

“The data are being produced by roughly the same set of people as in the past,” Aaron Sojourner, senior economist at the W.E. Upjohn Institute, said.

Source: AP

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Manuel

Political

Economic

The Trump administration plans to lower the United States’ tariffs on goods from Switzerland, according to an announcement Friday from the White House and the Swiss government following a meeting with US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer.

The tariff rate the US charges on Swiss imports will fall to 15% from 39%, which had been among the highest levies the United States charges for any country’s goods.

As part of the agreement, Swiss companies committed to investing “at least $200 billion into the United States, with at least $67 billion worth of investment occurring in 2026,” according to a White House fact sheet published on Friday. In a separate statement, the Swiss government said the total investments would be completed by 2028. It also said it agreed to lower tariffs on “a range of American products.”

Additionally, tariffs on pharmaceuticals and semiconductors from Switzerland won’t exceed 15%, according to a joint statement. This comes as the Trump administration has been mulling higher tariffs on both sectors.

“They’re going to send a lot of manufacturing here to United States — pharmaceuticals, gold smelting, railway equipment,” Greer said in a CNBC interview on Friday, previewing details of the agreement.

Wristwatches, unsmelted gold and medical equipment are all among the top goods the United States buys from Switzerland. While gold had been excluded from the tariffs, wristwatches and medical equipment, as well as other Swiss exports, could get cheaper for Americans to buy.

The United States ran a $38 billion trade deficit with Switzerland last year, according to US Commerce Department data. Greer said the agreement reached seeks to lower that.

Before President Donald Trump’s second term, goods from Switzerland were generally charged a tariff of between 0% to 2.5%.

“Although overall tariffs remain higher than before the additional tariffs were introduced in April, the agreed reduction in additional tariffs is expected to have a positive impact on the Swiss economy,” the Swiss government said.

Source: CNN

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Manuel

Political

Commodity

President Donald Trump is slated to sign an order on Friday reducing tariffs on beef, tomatoes, coffee and bananas, according to a White House official, a move aimed at lowering costs on groceries as the administration faces pressure from voters to cut prices on everyday goods.

The exemptions would reduce trade levies on the commodities, which can’t be produced in the US in sufficient quantity to meet domestic demand. The exact scope of the tariff reduction, how many total goods are included and how widely it would apply, were not immediately clear.

The White House official, who requested anonymity to speak about the executive order which has not been made public, said the president is following through on his pledge to cut trade deals and then adjust levies as needed. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer teased the plan earlier Friday, saying that it fits in with Trump’s broader strategy to create tariff exemptions for key goods and sectors.

Source: Bloomberg

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Manuel

Cryptocurrency

Executives are turning to a novel structure to fund crypto accumulation vehicles as investor appetite thins.

They’re called in-kind contributions, and they now account for a growing share of digital-asset treasury, or DAT, deals. Instead of raising cash to buy tokens in the open market, DAT sponsors contribute large slugs of their own crypto, often unlisted and hard to value.

Digital-asset treasuries are a new breed of public company built to hold concentrated crypto positions. The structure surged in 2025 as small-cap firms, especially in biotech and mining, reinvented themselves as digital-asset proxies. Sponsors provide tokens or raise money to buy them, and the stock then trades as a kind of listed bet on crypto. For insiders, it’s a shortcut to liquidity. For investors, a wager on upside.

But not all DATs carry the same level of risk. Earlier deals raised money to buy tokens through regular markets, which offered at least some independent price check. In-kind contributions skip that step — letting insiders decide what their tokens are worth, sometimes before the token even trades publicly. That shift means pricing and trading risks land more squarely on shareholders, many of them retail investors.

Investor faith is already wobbling, with Bitcoin’s latest plunge well below $100,000 adding to the stress. Many DATs that once traded above the value of their holdings now trade below it. As insiders supply the tokens and set their price, it’s becoming harder for investors to tell what these deals are really worth, or when to get out.

The in-kind structure was on full display in a recent $545 million private placement by Tharimmune Inc., a biotech firm-turned-crypto proxy, to set up a buyer of Canton Coins. About 80% of the raise came in the form of unlisted Canton tokens, priced at 20 cents each, according to an investor presentation seen by Bloomberg News. The token began trading on exchanges Nov. 10 and is now around 11 cents, CoinGecko data show.

Tharimmune didn’t respond to a request for comment.

More deals are following the same template. In these placements, insiders contribute tokens — sometimes illiquid or unlisted — to form a treasury, lock in valuations and seed the perception of market demand. But when tokens list below deal price, public shareholders absorb the difference.

The rise of in-kind DATs highlight a broader shift in how crypto risk is being offloaded. With fresh capital harder to attract, sponsors are using public wrappers to crystallize token value and initiate price discovery. The vehicles can resemble circular trades, where the same actors supply the asset, set its value and benefit from the optics of a successful raise. What looks like market demand can instead be recycled inventory.

A sharp market selloff of the kind that occurred in October can leave retail investors bearing the brunt of in-kind trades unwinding.

“Ultimately, if market sentiment shifts, public investors in the fund, particularly retail, may be left exposed if the underlying illiquidity is finally tested, leaving them to absorb the very losses the sponsor’s contribution structure was designed to sidestep,” said Chris Holland, partner at Singaporean consulting firm HM. Especially for smaller tokens, an in-kind contribution “shifts much of the liquidity and market impact risk to the DAT,” he added.

Singapore-based 10X Research said in an October report that retail traders had lost an estimated $17 billion buying stocks modeled on Michael Saylor’s archetypal Bitcoin buyer Strategy Inc. New Crypto Deals Put Retail at Risk After $17 Billion Wipeout_1

New Crypto Deals Put Retail at Risk After $17 Billion Wipeout_1

Canton isn’t alone in leaning heavily on untested tokens to get a treasury deal done. Alt5 Sigma Corp. raised $1.5 billion in August to invest in tokens issued by World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture with ties to US President Donald Trump. Half of the total sum came in the form of WLFI tokens priced at 20 cents each. At that time, WLFI tokens weren’t trading on exchanges.

Then there’s Flora Growth Corp., a Nasdaq-listed company that announced a $401 million deal to start acquiring Zero Gravity tokens in September. On closer inspection, the firm had raised just $35 million in cash to pair with a $366 million in-kind contribution of then-unlisted 0G tokens. Those tokens were priced at around $3 a piece; they subsequently listed, and are now trading at about $1.20.

Flora Growth remains confident in the potential of DATs “to give investors new on-ramps into crypto,” Chief Executive Officer Daniel Reis-Faria said. “I have a long-term conviction-driven approach and belief in both 0G and decentralized AI infrastructure.”

Both companies’ shares have been under pressure from the moment they became crypto proxies. They are each down more than 65% since announcing plans to adopt a DAT strategy.

Alt5 Sigma didn’t respond to a request for comment. New Crypto Deals Put Retail at Risk After $17 Billion Wipeout_2

“An 80% in-kind DAT is effectively a thin equity wrapper around one single volatile token,” said Akshat Vaidya, who has overseen investments in crypto treasuries as co-founder and managing partner of Arthur Hayes’ family office Maelstrom. “If the token drops 50%, the share price falls 80%-100% because the premium evaporates at the same time that forced sellers hit the bid.”

Leon Foong, managing partner at Mythos Venture Partners, an active investor in DATs, said that in-kind contributions create “a reflexivity which can act both ways — on the upside but also a downward spiral.” The more illiquid the token, the riskier the deal, he added.

To be sure, in-kind contributions have been part and parcel of the DAT trade since it took off in the first half of the year. In July, crypto veteran Adam Back’s Blockstream poured 25,000 Bitcoin — worth about $3 billion at the time — into a blank check company that partnered with an investment vehicle backed by Cantor Fitzgerald to form a treasury company. But that kind of structure hasn’t raised eyebrows, thanks in part to how liquid and widely distributed the original cryptocurrency has become.

Contributions of less-liquid tokens, on the other hand, create “a very delicate balance,” according to Vaidya, “because the DAT sponsors are usually the same people who hold the most of the underlying token as well.”

Source: Bloomberg

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Manuel

Political

Bond

British financial assets were under pressure Friday on growing speculation that the Labour government has ditched plans to raise income taxes in a crucial budget at the end of the month.

Treasury chief Rachel Reeves was clearly considering becoming the first Chancellor of the Exchequer in 50 years to increase the basic rate of income tax. But widespread reports say she has decided against it, causing investors to grow nervous over the uncertain budget process.

By late afternoon London time, the pound was 0.4% lower at $1.3137, while the yield, or interest rate, on the British government's benchmark 10-year bond was up 0.13 percentage point at 4.57%.

The increase in the yield is particularly illustrative as it shows that investors are demanding a bigger return on their bond holdings, a clear sign that they are fretting about the outlook for the U.K.'s public finances and the government's ability to act boldly over fears higher income taxes would anger voters.

“This episode demonstrates the importance of the budget as a test of market confidence in the U.K. government’s fiscal approach,” said Deutsche Bank's chief U.K. economist, Andrew Goodwin.

“If the cause is political, with the government concerned about how voters will react to income tax hikes, it may strengthen perceptions that the government lacks the appetite to take tough fiscal decisions,” he added.

It’s a high-stakes time for the government, which is languishing in the opinion polls barely a year-and-a-half after coming to power and Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s favorability ratings deep in negative territory.

Reeves had been expected to hike the main income tax rate in her budget on Nov. 26, which would break Labour's central pledge in its manifesto ahead of last year's general election, which saw the party sweep back to power after 14 years.

Reeves has been laying the ground for tax rises over recent weeks, and as recently as Monday, she indicated that the alternative to breaking the manifesto pledge would be “deep cuts” to public investment.

Wes Streeting, the health secretary who earlier this week was being briefed by supposed allies to Starmer, welcomed reports that the income tax has been abandoned, partly because it would have further undermined trust in politics as a whole.

“It is really important that we keep the promises that we made to the public at the last general election,” he said.

In recent days, Reeves received updated forecasts from the independent Office for Budget Responsibility. An improvement would lessen the need for Reeves to raise as much as money as she had been planning for, and experts say stronger wage growth in recent months will mean higher taxes coming into the Treasury.

The British economy, the sixth-largest in the world, has underperformed its long-run average since the global financial crisis of 2008-2009, and the center-left Labour government elected in July 2024 has struggled to deliver the economic growth it said was its driving mission.

Inflation remains stubbornly high and growth sluggish, frustrating efforts to repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living.

Source: AP

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Justin

Cryptocurrency

Key takeaways:

Bitcoin's drop below $100,000 comes as a Wyckoff Distribution pattern points to a potential decline toward $86,000.
Some analysts remain optimistic, arguing that the bull market will hold as long as the $94,000 support level remains intact.

Bitcoin (BTC) has just slipped under the key $100,000 support level, driven by hawkish Federal Reserve prospects and persistent whale selling.

BTC/USDT four-hour chart. Source: TradingView

Now, a classic technical breakdown setup is strengthening the case for prolonged selling in the Bitcoin market.

Wyckoff distribution model warns of BTC price drop to $86,000

The schematic, highlighted by analyst @follis_ on X, shows Bitcoin's recent structure tracking the classic five-phase Wyckoff Distribution, a pattern often seen near macro market tops, as shown below.

Wyckoff distribution schematic illustration

The alignment is strong enough that the Bitcoin bull market "might actually be over," @follis_ said.

BTC's surge above $122,000 marked the Buying Climax (BC), followed by an Automatic Reaction (AR) and Secondary Tests (ST) that failed to create higher highs.

BTC/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView/follis_

The early-October push toward $126,200 resembled an Upthrust After Distribution (UTAD), a final bullish deviation that signals demand exhaustion.

From there, Bitcoin printed multiple Last Points of Supply (LPSY) and lost mid-range support near $110,000, confirming Phase D.

It dropped below the AR/SOW zone at $102,000–$104,000, then shifted BTC into Phase E, the markdown phase, accelerating the decline. By Friday, BTC had dropped below $95,000 on Binance.

Based on Wyckoff's measured-move method, the $122,000–$104,000 distribution band implies an $18,000 downside projection, i.e., $86,000 as the primary target.

BTC/USDT daily chart. Source: TradingView/follis_

The bearish shift occurred as global risk appetite deteriorated, driven by fears that the Federal Reserve would not cut interest rates in December.

The US government shutdown, which ended on Thursday, restricted access to key economic data, making policymakers less confident about easing monetary policy. That uncertainty rippled through risk assets, hurting Bitcoin alongside US stocks.

Some Bitcoin analysts are still bullish

Bitcoin's broader uptrend remains intact unless the price falls below the key $94,000 level, the average cost basis of six- to 12-month holders, according to CryptoQuant CEO Ki Young Ju.

Bitcoin realized price UTXO band chart. Source: CryptoQuant

Bitwise CEO Hunter Horsley said Bitcoin "may have been in a bear market for almost six months" and is now nearing the end of it, adding that "the setup for crypto right now has never been stronger."