Trump sends more tariff letters, Wall Street gets trillion-dollar Nvidia boost

ABC NEWS (Australia)

It was a solid day for both the Australian dollar and the share market, while Donald Trump's new tariffs on copper and Brazilian imports might have unintended consequences for American consumers.

Transcript

00:00America's economic self-harm continues, with Donald Trump sending out more letters to other

00:07countries, dictating the new tariffs their goods will face when they arrive in the US.

00:12The tariff on Brazil's imports will jump from 10% to 50%, partly because his unhappy

00:17that his political ally, the former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, is being prosecuted

00:23for, allegedly, trying to overthrow the government after an election loss. A few parallels there.

00:28But the use of tariffs as political punishment will probably end up making inflation worse

00:33for American consumers, especially for those who can't live without their coffee. Particularly

00:38when you consider Brazil is America's largest supplier of Arabica beans. Plus, coffee inflation

00:45in Trumpland is already above 10%, and it's not easy to find alternatives quickly. So

00:50Starbucks should probably be up in arms about this. On top of that, the US President has

00:55announced August 1st is when his massive 50% tariff on copper imports will begin, which

01:00led to copper futures in America surging to record highs, much higher than everywhere else.

01:06So this looks to be the early signs of an own goal.

01:10Meanwhile, it was a solid day for mining stocks, which drove the Australian share market up

01:14by 0.6%. The Aussie dollar is buying 65 and a half US cents, while gold, oil and iron ore

01:20prices rose. Overseas, markets traded mostly higher, with Wall Street getting a major boost

01:26from Nvidia, which has hit a market value of 4 trillion US dollars. And in the past two and

01:32a half years, its share price has risen by 1000%. Even the price of Bitcoin, which hit a new record,

01:38didn't rise anywhere near as much, which gives you an idea about how crazy this AI boom is.

01:44And that's finance.

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