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Donald Trump's chicken and egg inflation problem

    Just in: Lawyers for Elon Musk said that he had withdrawn his bid of $ 97.4 billion on OpenAi's control if the company stopped his efforts to become a profit motive. More below.

    Separately: you may remember that I have one a few years ago series of columnsAfter a series of massive shootings, which have inspired the establishment of a “Merchant Category Code” for rifle shop, so that credit card companies can better identify suspicious activities as they already did to prevent money laundering and sex trafficking.

    Well, this week, Riley Moore, Republican of West Virginia, representative an account introduced To make it illegal for credit card companies to “demand codes for trader categories that distinguish a firearm shop from the retailer in the general gaming.” That means that gun stores could mask what they are selling. What do you think of what happens?

    President Trump inherited a strong economy with thriving labor and stock markets. But one economic Holdover could bind his hands: stubborn strong inflation.

    Investors are already receiving Antsy, with stock markets that fall briefly and the bond market that so far suffers on the worst day of the year after unexpectedly worrying revelations in the latest report of the consumer price index. It raises questions about what options the White House and Fed should maneuver if the prices would continue to rise.

    The latter: The CPI data showed the headline prices in the past three months with an annual pace of 4.5 percent -well above the objective of 2 percent of the central bank.

    The proceeds on 10-year-old Treasury notes, which tend to support mortgage and credit card rates, has enriched almost one tenth of one percentage point after the release. (They had something relaxed on Thursday.) Analysts have warned that the bond market could act as a brake on some of Trump's policy ideas.

    It is not surprising that Trump blamed the reconciled inflation for his predecessor, Joe Biden.

    But Trump will have to contend with a new inflation Wild Card: Bird Griep. Wednesday's inflation report showed that the disease has hit the supermarket paths hard, so that the egg prices have sent no less than 15.2 percent in the last four weeks after a large number of nation chickens.

    The increase in egg prices is “the biggest increase of about a decade and pushing the annual prices by 53 percent,” wrote Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial, on Wednesday in a research memorandum.

    Persistent inflation could spoil Trump's economic plans, Including tax cuts, a occurrence of immigration and rates. That policy “could all contribute to inflation if their effects ran through the economy, so that the Fed keeps the interest rates higher than they would have been under the status quo,” wrote Bill Adams, the chief economist for Comerica Bank, in a customer nut On Wednesday.

    The wish from Trump to lower interest rates, which he called again on Wednesday just before the CPI report, is also at odds with the most market guards.

    What will Jay Powell do? The FED chairman called a high inflation on Wednesday by saying that the central bank “wants to keep policy restrictive.” Powell bypassed questions from legislators about Trump's demand for lower rates and repeated that data would determine the next step of the FED, a position that the president will aggravate.

    The chance of extra tariff reductions has fallen considerably last week, whereby Futures traders see only one reduction on Thursday this year. “The Fed must stay on hold,” Aditya Bhave, an economist at Bank of America, told CNBC.

    The Senate will probably be the nomination of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. confirm on Thursday. The choice of President Trump for the health secretary, whose criticism of vaccines and his vow to 'become wild' on health the anger of public health officials and some health care leaders has steadily won in recent weeks about recurring Republican legislators. The health care sector did not ultimately fought hard against the nomination of Kennedy, because the costs of pronouncing can be too high, Politrico reports.

    President Trump's movements to end the war in Ukraine Ripple through the markets. The dollar and the oil price fell, while European shares rose for the hope for an end to the conflict after Trump said he had spoken with President Vladimir Putin. The other Western allies of Ukraine rejected peace talks in which Kyiv was not involved, even when analysts said that President Volodymyr Zensky was confronted with an increasingly difficult hand.

    JPMorgan Chase is said to have started firing employees. According to the hundreds, according to Barron's, the cutbacks will come after the lender had enjoyed a record profit and an increasing share price last year. Blue Origin, the rocket company of Jeff Bezos, will dismiss employees after the successful launch of his new Glenn Rocket, Bloomberg reports.

    The growing influence of Elon Musk in the Trump government has imposed control over how much his companies benefit from his government work.

    These concerns have now been extended to a potential government contract of $ 400 million for Tesla that was discussed under President Joe Biden.

    The latter: Drop Site News reported on Wednesday that a purchasing forecast from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs initially listed a contract of $ 400 million that was expected to be awarded to Tesla for armored cyber trucks. It is worth noting that the report was last revised in December.

    After Drop -Site News and the Jack Ewing from Times reported on Wednesday about the Document from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it was changed to remove any mention of Tesla. (The report now says “armored electric vehicle.”)

    On X said Musk said: “I am pretty sure that Tesla will not get $ 400 million. At least no one has called it to me.” The Times notes that a contract would be split with other companies, including the Armorer Armormax. It is. Unclear whether the contract will move forward.

    The incident underlines concern about the ties of Musk Businesses with the government. The entrepreneur leads an increasingly powerful cost-saving initiative that, by government agencies, are guiding some supervision of his companies. One of the last worries is that his efforts to defend the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau arrive when X tries to offer payment services.

    A big question is whether those worries could end cost Musk companies legitimate matters.

    Speaking of Trump's movements to lower the regulations, Here is a handy cheating note from the time about those efforts, including the effective closure of the CFPB and retreats by the SECs and other financial authorities on climate -related matters.

    Lawyers for Elon Musk said on Thursday that the billionaire would withdraw his $ 97.4 billion takeover bid on OpenAi's control if the AI-start-up would stop efforts to become a profit-making company. (Perhaps because the bid complicates that wider goal.)

    Speaking of that offer: the backers include big names such as Baron Capital Group, Valor Management, Atreids Management and 8VC from Jon Lonsdale. But their motivation for supporting the bid may not be about investing in OpenAI.

    All Musk backers also have investments in his other companies, Such as Tesla, SpaceX, Xai or Neuralink – and they want to continue to have access to invest in further rounds.

    It also helps to have the ear of Musk, the richest man in the world who has a megaphone who reaches more than 200 million followers on his X platform. Not to mention his proximity of President Trump.

    It is a form of soft power and access to musk Whose companies have made billions of investors. It is not clear whether these backers have done some due diligence about the economy of OpenAi.

    And if Musk's lawyer has to be taken against nominal value, he said that if the entrepreneur wins the company, OpenAi would return to his roots as an “open source, safety-oriented force forever.” That sounds like it would be less commercially focused.

    The Board of Directors of OpenAi asked for the reason for Musk's bid, Accusing him of hypocrisy in a court on Wednesday. The motivations behind the range of the consortium can be relevant to the challenge of OpenAi.

    For investors, the costs to be part of the bid group are almost nothing if it goes nowhere, And it keeps the backers in Musk's good graces.

    But the billionaire also likes to keep his investors satisfied, so if his takeover of Twitter is an example, he can find ways to reward them: after X lost value, he started his own AI company, Xai, and gave Investors in the social network 25 percent of the new company.

    • In other OpenAI News: Josh Kushner, whose Thrive Capital led that the most recent fundraising round of the start-up, outlined a potential financial windfall for the company's employees if they stayed, according to the information.

    Humanoid robots are increasingly to the forefront of artificial intelligence, promoted by Elon Musk, Jensen Huang from Nvidia and others.

    Now Apptronik, a start-up whose robot is used in production by companies such as Mercedes-Benz, uses that increased interest and has collected $ 350 million in a new fundraising.

    What about the round: It was led by the risk capital company B Capital-Wiens chairman, the Renaissance Technologies co-founder Howard Morgan, is a member of the board of Apptronik and Capital Factory, a Texas-based investment company, and Google, whose DeepMind Ai Lab also a tech Partner of the start-up.

    Jeff Cardenas, co-founder and CEO of Apptronik, told the Dealbook's Michael de la Merced that the company had started considering a fundraising.

    It is an important step for Apptronik, A nine-year-old start-up spons from the University of Texas in Austin. The Apollo robot is intended as a general automatic transmission that can handle a wide range of tasks in a factory, instead of specializing in one track such as an arm.

    Apptronik so far has collected $ 65 million and was financed for the first five years “Until this round we had more income than the money raised,” said Cardenas. “We wanted to ensure that we have the right scales.

    Apptronik is confronted with a steep competition. In addition to Tesla and Nvidia, there is no shortage of start-ups aimed at robots, including figure AI, agility robotics and physical intelligence.

    But Cardenas pointed to the contracts with Mercedes and the logistics company GXO, as well as conversations with dozens of potential customers, as signs that his company is growing.

    Yet Robotics needs a boost of more than investors. Cardenas described a worldwide race to produce humanoid robots, with China trying to take the lead. To keep track of, he argued, the United States must concentrate on innovations in AI software and on production options.

    “We don't have a national robotics strategy,” said Cardenas.

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