US Used Car Prices Surge As Tariffs Drive Market Volatility

Summary:

July 8 (Reuters) - A gauge of U.S. used vehicle prices sold at wholesale auctions that proved predictive ahead of the inflation

A gauge of U.S. used vehicle prices sold at wholesale auctions that proved predictive ahead of the inflation surge following the COVID pandemic is climbing again, last month notching its largest annual increase in nearly three years.

The rise comes amid ongoing vehicle price and sales volatility connected to auto tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump.

The Manheim Used Vehicle Value Index rose 1.6% in June from May on a seasonally adjusted basis and surged 6.3% from a year earlier, the largest year-over-year increase since August 2022, according to data released on Tuesday. At 208.5, the index has been trending upward for a year and is now at its highest since October 2023.

“Wholesale appreciation trends have been more volatile over Q2 as tariffs really impacted new sales and supply, which impacted the used marketplace as well,” said Jeremy Robb, senior director of economic and industry insights at Cox Automotive, which provides the index.

Price pressures typically ease in the second half of the year, but Robb said retail vehicle sales remain "a bit hotter than prior years" and the supply of vehicles coming off lease into the used-car market has been trending downward, "two factors which should be fairly supportive of higher values as we move onward.”

Trump's 25% tariff on imported autos prompted a surge in new vehicle-buying during the early spring as consumers sought to front-run anticipated price increases from the levies. Sales fell off substantially in May and dropped again in June.

Overall inflation has so far defied the predictions of most economists, but many Federal Reserve officials remain convinced some sort of price surge will follow and are hesitant to cut interest rates until satisfied that risk has passed.

Manheim's index in recent years has caught the eye of private economists and some Fed officials who saw it as among the early indicators auguring for a more substantial, and long-lasting, bout of inflation as the economy emerged from the pandemic in 2021 and 2022.

The index began a sharp climb in late 2020 that persisted for more than a year. By mid-2022, overall U.S. inflation as measured by the Consumer Price Index had topped 9% and was the highest since the 1980s.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller in the fall of 2021 warned against "selectively ignoring data series - be it used car prices, food and energy prices or household surveys of inflation expectations. All of these series convey important information about the evolution of inflation, and one should exhibit caution in dismissing data as outliers."

At the time, Waller was building the case for interest rate hikes to combat still-building inflation that some of his colleagues considered "transitory."

Now, though, Waller, who is viewed to be among those Trump is considering as a successor to Fed Chair Jerome Powell, appears more concerned the tariff increases will hurt demand rather than stoke another lasting bout of inflation. Waller said recently he was open to cutting rates as early as the Fed's meeting later in July.

Source: Reuters

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James Whitman

Political

Handing President Donald Trump another victory, the U.S. Supreme Court gave the go-ahead on Tuesday for his administration to pursue mass federal job cuts potentially numbering in the hundreds of thousands and the restructuring of numerous agencies.

Workforce reductions are being planned by the administration at the U.S. Departments of Agriculture, Commerce, Health and Human Services, State, Treasury, Veterans Affairs and more than a dozen other agencies.

The Supreme Court lifted San Francisco-based U.S. District Judge Susan Illston's May 22 order that blocked large-scale federal layoffs called "reductions in force" while litigation in the case proceeds.

White House spokesperson Harrison Fields welcomed the court's action, calling it "another definitive victory for the president and his administration" that reinforced Trump's authority to implement "efficiency across the federal government."

The Supreme Court in recent months has sided with Trump in several cases that were acted upon on an emergency basis since he returned to office in January including clearing the way for implementation of some of his hardline immigration policies. In addition, Trump last week also claimed the biggest legislative win of his second presidential term with congressional passage of a massive package of tax and spending cuts.

The court, in a brief unsigned order on Tuesday, said Trump's administration was "likely to succeed on its argument that the executive order" and a memorandum implementing his order were lawful. The court said it was not assessing the legality of any specific plans for layoffs at federal agencies.

Liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was the sole member of the nine-person court to publicly dissent from the decision. Jackson wrote that Illston's "temporary, practical, harm-reducing preservation of the status quo was no match for this court's demonstrated enthusiasm for greenlighting this president's legally dubious actions in an emergency posture."

Trump in February announced "a critical transformation of the federal bureaucracy" in an executive order directing agencies to prepare for a government overhaul aimed at significantly reducing the federal workforce and gutting offices and programs opposed by his administration.

A group of unions, non-profits and local governments that sued to block the administration's mass layoffs said Tuesday's Supreme Court ruling "dealt a serious blow to our democracy and puts services that the American people rely on in grave jeopardy."

"This decision does not change the simple and clear fact that reorganizing government functions and laying off federal workers en masse haphazardly without any congressional approval is not allowed by our Constitution," the plaintiffs said in a statement, adding that they would "continue to fight on behalf of the communities we represent."

Illston had ruled that Trump exceeded his authority in ordering the government downsizing.

"As history demonstrates, the president may broadly restructure federal agencies only when authorized by Congress," Illston wrote.

The judge's ruling was the broadest of its kind against the government overhaul being pursued by Trump and the Department of Government Efficiency, a key player in the Republican president's drive to slash the federal workforce.

Formerly spearheaded by billionaire Elon Musk, DOGE has sought to eliminate federal jobs, shrink and reshape the U.S. government and root out what they see as wasteful spending. Musk formally ended his government work on May 30 and subsequently had a public falling out with Trump.

The judge blocked the agencies from carrying out mass layoffs and limited their ability to cut or overhaul federal programs. Illston also ordered the reinstatement of workers who had lost their jobs, though she delayed implementing this portion of her ruling while the appeals process plays out.

Don Moynihan, a public policy professor at the University of Michigan, said the Supreme Court's decision allows Trump to move forward with mass firings of federal workers, without adjudicating the legality of those layoffs.

"These are not minor reductions in force," Moynihan said. "Trump has made clear he wants a major downsizing of the federal government. The court is willing to let him move forward and do severe and irreparable damage to public services."

Americans narrowly favor on Trump's campaign to downsize the federal government, with about 56% saying they supported the effort and 40% opposed, according to April Reuters/Ipsos polling. Their views broke down along party lines with 89% of Republicans, but just 26% of Democrats, supportive.

'SUPERVISORY POWERS'

The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in a 2-1 ruling on May 30 denied the administration's request to halt the judge's ruling. That prompted the Justice Department's June 2 emergency request to the Supreme Court to halt Illston's order.

"The Constitution does not erect a presumption against presidential control of agency staffing, and the president does not need special permission from Congress to exercise core Article II powers," the Justice Department told the court, referring to the constitution's section delineating presidential authority.

Allowing the Trump administration to move forward with its "breakneck reorganization," the plaintiffs told the court, would mean that "programs, offices and functions across the federal government will be abolished, agencies will be radically downsized from what Congress authorized, critical government services will be lost and hundreds of thousands of federal employees will lose their jobs."

The Supreme Court in recent months has let Trump's administration resume deporting migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show the harms they could face and end temporary legal status previously granted on humanitarian grounds to hundreds of thousands of migrants.

In addition, it has allowed Trump to implement his ban on transgender people in the U.S. military, blocked a judge's order for the administration to rehire thousands of fired employees, twice sided with DOGE and curbed the power of federal judges to impose nationwide rulings impeding presidential policies.

Source: Reuters

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Manuel

Central Bank

Economic

Australia’s central bank intends to refresh its research strategy to support policymaking, Deputy Governor Andrew Hauser said, a day after the Reserve Bank shocked investors and economists with an unchanged interest-rate decision.

“Navigating the complex and unpredictable world of tomorrow will pose big new challenges,” Hauser said in the text of a speech on Wednesday.

“That’s why, spurred on by the findings of the RBA Review, the bank will be refreshing its research strategy, with a new set of priorities, identifying the big questions that need to be answered to support future policymaking,” he said, referring to a wide-ranging inquiry into the central bank.

“We’ll use those priorities to hold ourselves to account.”

The comments come a day after the RBA held its key rate steady at 3.85%, a decision that sparked criticism about its communication strategy. Governor Michele Bullock said Tuesday that the decision to pause was one of timing rather than direction, suggesting further easing is in the offing.

Hauser spoke about some of the tectonic shifts in the global economic system which he said is “once more in flux, as free trade is rolled back; geopolitical alliances shift; climate change accelerates; and productivity growth slows to a crawl in most developed countries.”

The deputy governor pointed to a slowdown in productivity growth as one of the key challenges facing Australia’s economy and pointed to work being done in the public sector including by the Productivity Commission, Treasury and the RBA.

The commission currently has five separate inquiries underway on potential reforms, which among other things will serve as inputs to the government’s economic reform roundtable in August that Governor Bullock will attend.

Hauser, whose speech highlighted some of the achievements of Australian macroeconomic thought, pondered whether the country can relearn lessons of the past and leverage its advantages, adding that the nation has no choice but to respond as a trading economy reliant on world markets.

“We can go one better: by marshaling our best brains we can turn this challenging environment to our advantage,” he said. “At the RBA, we stand ready to play our part in this great endeavor.”

Source: Bloomberg

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James Whitman

Economic

Commodity

Key points:

● Commerce chief Lutnick: probe into US copper imports complete

● Chile, Canada and Mexico are top US copper suppliers

● US Comex copper futures jump 12%, hit record high

President Donald Trump said he will announce a 50% tariff on copper on Tuesday, hoping to boost U.S. production of a metal critical to electric vehicles, military hardware, the power grid and many consumer goods.

U.S. Comex copper futures jumped more than 12% to a record high after Trump announced the planned tariffs, which came earlier than the industry had expected, and the rate was steeper.

Trump told reporters at a White House cabinet meeting that he planned to make the copper tariff announcement later in the day but he did not say when the tariff would take effect.

"I believe the tariff on copper, we're going to make 50%," Trump said.

After Trump spoke, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said in an interview on CNBC that the copper tariffs would likely be put in place by the end of July or August 1. He said Trump would post details on his Truth Social media account sometime on Tuesday.

In February, the administration announced a so-called Section 232 investigation into U.S. imports of the red metal. The deadline for the investigation to conclude was November, but Lutnick said the review was already complete.

"The idea is to bring copper home, bring copper production home, bring the ability to make copper, which is key to the industrial sector, back home to America," Lutnick said.

The National Mining Association declined to comment, saying it preferred to wait until details were released. The American Critical Minerals Association did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Copper is used in construction, transportation, electronics and many other industries. The U.S. imports roughly half of its copper needs each year.

Major copper mining projects across the U.S. have faced strong opposition in recent years due to a variety of reasons, including Rio Tinto,and BHP'sResolution Copper project in Arizona and Northern Dynasty Minerals'sPebble Mine project in Alaska.

Shares of the world's largest copper producer, Phoenix-based Freeport-McMoRan, shot up nearly 5% in Tuesday afternoon trading. The company, which produced 1.26 billion pounds of copper in the U.S. last year, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Freeport, which would benefit from U.S. copper tariffs but worries that the duties would hurt the global economy, has advised Trump to focus on boosting U.S. copper production.

Countries set to be most affected by any new U.S. copper tariff would be Chile, Canada and Mexico, which were the top suppliers to the U.S. of refined copper, copper alloys and copper products in 2024, according to U.S. Census Bureau data.

Chile, Canada and Peru - three of the largest copper suppliers to the U.S. - have told the administration that imports from their countries do not threaten U.S. interests and should not face tariffs. All three have free trade deals with the U.S.

Mexico's Economy Ministry, Chile's Foreign Ministry and Canada's Finance Ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Chile's Mining Ministry and Codelco, that country's leading copper miner, declined to comment.

A 50% tariff on copper imports would hit U.S. companies that use the metal because the country is years away from meeting its needs, said Ole Hansen, head of commodity strategy at Saxo Bank.

"The U.S. has imported a whole year of demand over the past six months, so the local storage levels are ample," Hansen said. "I see a correction in copper prices following the initial jump."

Source: Reuters

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Manuel

Cryptocurrency

Ethereum and Consensys co-founder Joe Lubin said companies adopting ETH treasury strategies will play a critical role in communicating the second-largest digital asset’s value to Wall Street, as major financial institutions ramp up blockchain use and process around 24 million transactions daily.

Lubin made the statement during an interview with CNBC on July 8 in response to queries about the rising trend of Ethereum treasury adoption.

According to Lubin: “It’s about telling the Ethereum story. What does Wall Street pay attention to? It pays attention to being able to make money.”

He contrasted Bitcoin’s strong narrative with Ethereum’s future-focused positioning, explaining that while Bitcoin has a value proposition people “can understand and get behind,” Ethereum has spent the last decade building scalable infrastructure in anticipation that internet activity will shift to Web3.

Lubin described Web3 as the natural decentralization of the web and said that Ethereum is now scalable, affordable, and legally usable in the US.

However, he added that regulatory hurdles under former SEC Chair Gary Gensler made it unattractive for projects to build and issue tokens, delaying broader consumer and enterprise adoption.

‘The biggest splash’

Lubin said that treasury strategies are emerging as a solution to address Ethereum’s current supply-demand imbalance. He added that holding ETH in treasuries is a strong business model and will be critical to stabilizing market conditions as more applications are built on Ethereum.

He pointed to SharpLink Gaming as an example, describing it as the largest ETH treasury company so far, with holdings exceeding 200,000 ETH. While other firms like Bitmain have also adopted similar strategies, Lubin said SharpLink has made “the biggest splash.”

According to Lubin: “Because decentralization is the direction of travel for the world. We believe that we’re going to see Ether and Bitcoin continue to rise over the next years and decades as we paradigm shift to more and more decentralization.”

He added that his team is acquiring tens of millions of dollars in Ethereum daily through multiple channels and plans to “stay the course.”

Lubin concluded that these treasury strategies will play a key role in cementing Ethereum’s relevance in traditional finance as the blockchain shifts from infrastructure building to mass application deployment.

Source: Cryptoslate

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Manuel

Political

Economic

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Tuesday the U.S. would "pretty soon" charge a 10% tariff on imports from BRICS countries, drawing another complaint from Brazil President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who just hosted the bloc's annual summit.

Trump, who raised the tariff threat on Sunday, said in a Tuesday cabinet meeting at the White House that the duty was on the way: "Anybody that's in BRICS is getting a 10% charge pretty soon ... If they're a member of BRICS, they're going to have to pay a 10% tariff ... and they won't be a member long."

The BRICS group expanded last year beyond Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa to include members such as Iran and Indonesia. Leaders at the summit in Rio de Janeiro voiced indirect criticism of U.S. military and trade policies.

Asked about Trump's tariff threat, Lula told journalists at the BRICS summit on Monday that the world does not want an emperor. After a state visit from Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Lula on Tuesday expressed further disagreement.

"We will not accept any complaints about the BRICS summit. We do not agree with the U.S. president insinuating he's going to put tariffs on BRICS countries," he told journalists in Brasilia.

Trump gave no specific date for the BRICS tariff to kick in. On Monday, a source familiar with the matter said the Trump administration would charge the tariff only if countries adopted anti-American policies, differentiating actions from statements like the one adopted by the BRICS leaders on Sunday.

Trump claimed without evidence on Tuesday that the group was set up to hurt the United States and he U.S. dollar's role as the world's reserve currency. He said he would not allow that to happen.

"BRICS was set up to degenerate our dollar and take our dollar ... take it off as the standard," he said. "And that's okay if they want to play that game, but I can play that game too."

Trump said losing the dollar's role as the world's reserve currency would be like "losing a war, a major world war. We would not be the same country any longer."

Brazil in February nixed plans for a common currency agenda during its presidency year.

Source: Reuters

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Manuel

Political

Economic

When President Donald Trump last rolled out tariffs this high, financial markets quaked, consumer confidence crashed and his popularity plunged.

Only three months later, he’s betting this time is different.

In his new round of tariffs being announced this week, Trump is essentially tethering the entire world economy to his instinctual belief that import taxes will deliver factory jobs and stronger growth in the U.S., rather than the inflation and slowdown predicted by many economists.

On Tuesday, he told his Cabinet that past presidents who hadn't aggressively deployed tariffs were “stupid.” Ever the salesman, Trump added that it was “too time-consuming” to try to negotiate trade deals with the rest of the world, so it was just easier to send them letters, as he's doing this week, that list the tariff rates on their goods.

The letters marked a change from his self-proclaimed April 2 “Liberation Day” event at the White House, where he had posterboards with the rates displayed, a choice that led to a brief market meltdown and the 90-day negotiating period with baseline 10% tariffs that will end Wednesday. Trump, instead, chose to send form letters with random capitalizations and punctuation and other formatting issues.

“It’s a better way,” Trump said of his letters. "It’s a more powerful way. And we send them a letter. You read the letter. I think it was well crafted. And, mostly it’s just a little number in there: You’ll pay 25%, 35%. We have some of at 60, 70."

When Trump said those words, he had yet to issue a letter with a tariff rate higher than 40%, which he levied Monday on Laos and Myanmar. He plans to put 25% tariffs on Japan and South Korea, two major trading partners and allies deemed crucial for curbing China's economic influence. Leaders of the 14 countries tariffed so far hope to negotiate over the next three weeks before the higher rates are charged on imports.

“I would say that every case I’m treating them better than they treated us over the years,” Trump said.

Three possible outcomes

His approach is at odds with how major trade agreements have been produced over the last half-century, detailed sessions that could sometimes take years to solve complex differences between nations.

There are three possible outcomes to this political and economic wager, each of which could drastically reshape international affairs and Trump's legacy.

Trump could prove most economic experts wrong and the tariffs could deliver growth as promised. Or he could retreat again on tariffs before their Aug. 1 start in a repeat of the “Trump Always Chickens Out” phenomenon, also known as TACO. Or he could damage the economy in ways that could boomerang against the communities that helped return him to the White House last year, as well as hurt countries that are put at a financial disadvantage by the tariffs.

Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., said Trump's letters had “extended his tariff purgatory for another month,” essentially freezing in place the U.S. economy as CEOs, foreign leaders and consumers are unclear of Trump's actual strategy on foreign trade.

“The TACO negotiating tactic pioneered by Trump is making his threats less and less credible and reducing our trading partners’ willingness to even meet us halfway,” Wyden said. “There’s no sign that he’s any closer to striking durable trade deals that would actually help American workers and businesses.”

So far, the stock and bond markets are relatively calm, with the S&P 500 stock index essentially flat Tuesday after a Monday decline. Trump is coming off a legislative win with his multitrillion-dollar income tax cuts. And he's confidently levying tariffs at levels that previously rocked global markets, buoyed by the fact that inflation has eased so far instead of accelerating as many economists and Democratic rivals had warned.

“By floating tariffs as high as 40% to even 100%, the administration has ‘normalized’ the 25% tariff hikes — yet this is still one of the most aggressive and disruptive tariff moves in modern history," said Wendong Zhang, an economist at Cornell University. "This gradual unveiling, paradoxically, risks normalizing what would otherwise be considered exceptionally large tariff hikes."

Others simply see Trump as a source of nonstop chaos, with the letters and their somewhat random tariff rates showing the absence of a genuine policy process inside his administration.

“It’s really just a validation that this policy is all over the place, that they’re running this by the seat of their pants, that there is no real strategy," said Desmond Lachman, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a right-leaning think tank.

Questions about how much money tariffs will generate

With Trump's 90-day tariff negotiation period ending, he has so far sent letters to 14 countries that place taxes on imported goods ranging from 25% to 40%. He said he would sign an order Tuesday to place 50% tariffs on copper and said at the Cabinet meeting that at some point pharmaceutical drugs could face tariffs of as much as 200%. All of that is on top of his existing 50% tariffs on steel and aluminum, 25% tariffs on autos and his separate import taxes on Canada, Mexico and China.

“The obvious inference is that markets for now are somewhat skeptical that Trump will go through with it, or alternatively they think compromises will be reached,” said Ben May, a director of global economic research at the consultancy Oxford Economics. “That’s probably the key element.”

May said the tariffs are likely to reduce the growth in U.S. household incomes, but not cause those incomes to shrink outright.

Trump has said his tariffs would close U.S. trade imbalances, though it's unclear why he would target nations such as Tunisia that do relatively little trade with America. Administration officials say trillions of dollars in tariff revenues over the next decade would help offset the revenue losses from the continuation and expansion of his 2017 tax cuts that were signed into law Friday.

The federal government has collected $98.2 billion in tariff revenues so far this year, more than double what it collected last year, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center.

At Tuesday's Cabinet meeting, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the tariff revenues could be “well over $300 billion by the end of the year.” Bessent added that “we don’t agree” with the Congressional Budget Office estimate that tariffs would bring in $2.8 trillion over 10 years, “which we think is probably low.”

The governments of Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and South Africa have each said they hope for further negotiations on tariffs with Trump, though it's unclear how that's possible as Trump has said it would be too “complicated” to hold all those meetings.

Instead on Tuesday, Trump posted on social media that the tariffs would be charged as scheduled starting Aug. 1.

"There has been no change to this date, and there will be no change," Trump said on Truth Social. “No extensions will be granted. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”.