00:00Another day, another tariff announcement.
00:04This time, Donald Trump is thinking of raising the blanket tariff rate to as high as 20%.
00:09Now, this could be bad news for Australia's exports,
00:12which have gotten off pretty lightly so far, with a US tariff rate of just 10%.
00:17And there was a noticeable drop for the Aussie dollar after the president's latest thought bubble.
00:22But it recovered pretty quickly to 65.8 US cents,
00:26while Bitcoin went above US$118,000, which is a new record high for the cryptocurrency.
00:32Now, locally, there were some signs of tariff fatigue for the ASX and all odds,
00:37which fell by just 0.1%, so barely anything.
00:41Though the best performing stocks were two rare earth miners,
00:44Iluca Resources and Linus Rare Earths, which jumped 16% and 22%,
00:49not because of anything special they did,
00:51but because a little-known company in the US called MP Materials
00:55which also mines rare earths has picked up the US Defence Department as its biggest shareholder.
01:01Essentially, the government there will pay US$400 million to control a 15% stake.
01:07The Trump administration has been keen to prop up the local critical minerals industry
01:12so it doesn't have to rely so much on its frenemy China,
01:15which currently dominates that market.
01:17Until this deal was finalised,
01:18its current largest shareholders are Hancock Prospecting,
01:22which is owned by billionaire Gina Reinhardt,
01:24and Sheng He Resources, which is partly owned by the Chinese government.
01:29Who'd have thought?
01:30Now, in commodities, oil prices fell while gold and iron ore rose.
01:34And overseas, global markets were mostly higher,
01:37especially Wall Street, which hit a new record
01:40as it continues to ignore the risks of a global trade war.
01:43And that's finance.
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