The first US presidential debate of 2020 degenerated into an ugly spectacle on Tuesday night as Donald Trump repeatedly interrupted Joe Biden and the Democratic challenger responded by calling the president a racist and telling him to “shut up”. In a series of acrimonious exchanges, Mr Trump declined to condemn white supremacist groups, suggested he might not accept the results of the election, and portrayed Mr Biden as beholden to his party’s leftwing and afraid to condemn anti-fascist protesters. Moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News appeared to lose control of the debate and frequently appealed for calm as the two candidates clashed, leading commentators on the right and left to say there had probably never been a presidential debate quite so chaotic. Donald Trump paid just $750 a year in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017, the New York Times reported on Sunday, after obtaining tax-return data the US president has refused to release in defiance of decades of presidential tradition. In 11 of the 18 years of taxes examined by the New York Times, Mr Trump paid no federal income taxes at all, the newspaper reported. The revelations came just days before Mr Trump’s first debate with Joe Biden, his Democratic rival for president, on Tuesday, and portrayed a real estate tycoon who paid less in federal income taxes than millions of ordinary Americans. The paper reported that Mr Trump's largely lossmaking business empire had long been propped up by his earnings from his reality TV show The Apprentice. A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from forcing Apple and Google to remove TikTok from their US app stores just hours before the companies would have been required to implement the ban. Judge Carl Nichols ruled in favour of TikTok on Sunday evening, after the company had argued the Trump administration was infringing on free speech and acting in a capricious manner to harm the short-video app. The US commerce department had ordered TikTok to be removed last Sunday. But it extended the deadline after President Donald Trump gave preliminary approval for a deal that would involve ByteDance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, selling a minority ownership stake to US companies Oracle and Walmart. Donald Trump announced the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court on Saturday, kicking off what is set to be a fierce confirmation battle just weeks before November’s presidential election. The US president revealed his pick in the Rose Garden of the White House and framed Ms Barrett’s nomination in stark terms, including claiming that the right to own guns under the Second Amendment was at stake. “The stakes for our country are incredibly high. Rulings that the Supreme Court will issue in the coming years will decide the survival of our Second Amendment, our religious liberty, our public safety and so much more,” he said. Ms Barrett, a 48-year-old federal appeals court judge, was favoured by religious conservatives and anti-abortion campaigners for the vacant seat left by Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the liberal icon and women’s rights pioneer who died last week. Senate Republicans have indicated they will move quickly to confirm Ms Barrett before the election, despite blocking Barack Obama’s Supreme Court nominee in 2016 on the grounds that it was an election year. After reviewing improvements in Tesla's own battery designs and manufacturing advancements that could result in huge reductions in battery costs, Musk promised a $25,000 Tesla electric car that would be available in about three years. Musk also promised on Tuesday that the $25,000 car would be capable of driving fully autonomously, a difficult feat because the sensors and other equipment needed for even partly autonomous driving are expensive. And even as he touted the company's ambitious future plans, he admitted that the company's fully-autonomous driving software experienced unforeseen challenges, prompting a "fundamental rewrite" of the "entire software stack," though he did not detail when that rewrite occurred. The battle to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the US Supreme Court was in full swing on Sunday, as Donald Trump’s pledge to nominate a new justice next week sparked anger from Democrats and opposition from two Republican senators. The US president told supporters on Saturday night he intended to make a nomination within days, adding that it will be a woman. But his plans were dealt a blow as a second Republican opposed the idea of making an appointment before the election, while Democrats threatened to do all they could to block him. The Federal Reserve has often said it would keep monetary policy loose for years to come in response to the coronavirus pandemic. On Wednesday, it tried to flesh out what that would mean in practice — and received mixed reviews. The US central bank said interest rates would not rise in the world’s largest economy until it reaches full employment and inflation hits 2 per cent and remains on track to “moderately exceed” that target “for some time”. The guidance reflected the Fed’s announcement last month of a new long-term monetary policy that abandoned pre-emptive rate rises to stymie inflation, and was touted by Jay Powell, Fed chair, as an additional step to boost the economic recovery from the coronavirus shock. Rene Haas, head of the intellectual property group at Arm Holdings, spent much of Monday trying to reassure customers that the SoftBank-owned chip design company was not about to turn them into second-class citizens. His efforts followed news the previous day that SoftBank had agreed to sell the UK company to Nvidia for up to $40bn, in what could end up as the semiconductor world’s biggest-ever deal. The deal was tantamount to dropping a bomb in the middle of the chip industry. Companies that license Arm’s designs — which are used in most smartphone processors and many other devices that require chips with lower power consumption — are worried they will be “disadvantaged” once the UK group falls under the control of one of their competitors, Mr Haas admitted. ByteDance has reached a preliminary “technical partnership” agreement with Oracle for TikTok’s US operations that does not include a full sale of the short video app, according to three people with knowledge of the matter. As part of the deal, Oracle plans to address the national security concerns that Donald Trump’s administration has raised over the Chinese company’s ownership of TikTok, said one of the people. The US technology group chaired by Larry Ellison, one of the few people in Silicon Valley who has publicly supported US president Donald Trump, is likely to own a minority stake in the US business. Citigroup has become the first major Wall Street bank to appoint a female chief executive, announcing on Thursday that Jane Fraser will succeed Mike Corbat. The succession was teed up by the Scottish woman’s appointment as Citi’s president last year, which insiders said was a precursor to her ultimately becoming chief executive of the bank, whose $2.2tn balance sheet makes it one of the world’s top lenders. “I have often said that I am a steadfast believer in term-limits,” Mr Corbat, 60, wrote in a post on his LinkedIn page. “With that in mind, I have given significant thought to when the time is right for me to hand over the reins and I have decided to retire in February.” LVMH’s $16.6bn takeover of US jeweller Tiffany has become embroiled in trade tensions between Paris and Washington, with the world’s largest luxury group saying it had to pull out of the deal after the French government urged it to delay completion. Tiffany hit back with a lawsuit against LVMH, which is controlled by French billionaire Bernard Arnault, alleging it used tactics such as delaying antitrust filings to delay the deal’s completion and run out the clock on the merger agreement. LVMH’s attempted withdrawal from the deal caps months of manoeuvring by Mr Arnault, dubbed “the wolf in cashmere” for his hardball dealmaking tactics. He has been seeking to renegotiate the terms of the $135-a-share deal agreed last November to reflect the fallout from the Covid-19 pandemic. Tesla’s stock on Tuesday fell by the most on record, in a sell-off sparked by news that the electric car pioneer was passed over for inclusion in the S&P 500. The shares were down 21 per cent, closing at $330.21, in their biggest slide since Tesla made its trading debut in 2010. The retreat pushed the shares to a three-week low amid a broader sell-off on Wall Street that hit big technology companies especially hard. The carmaker was the worst performer of any Nasdaq 100 component on Tuesday. The extreme volatility in Tesla’s shares has left them susceptible to wild swings. The retreat wiped about $82bn from its shares, though it gained $52bn in a single day at the end of August. The British government is planning legislation that could undermine key elements of last October’s Brexit withdrawal agreement. The move threatens to derail the current EU-UK trade negotiations, which resume in London on Tuesday. Brexiters fear that the withdrawal agreement, which includes a protocol to avoid a return to a hard border in Northern Ireland, makes it impossible for the UK to be truly sovereign because it leaves London tethered to Brussels in key areas, including state aid and customs policy. In a sign of rising tensions between the two sides, David Frost, the UK chief negotiator, vowed over the weekend that the UK would not become a “client state” of the EU by agreeing a trade deal that included so-called “level playing field” clauses setting common rules and standards for both sides. Shares in SoftBank fell 8 per cent in Tokyo on Monday after weekend revelations that the Japanese conglomerate was the mystery “whale” that had driven US technology stocks to record highs. The Financial Times reported on Sunday that the group’s trading strategy meant it was now sitting on gains of about $4bn after founder Masayoshi Son drove aggressive bets on equity derivatives. Traders in Tokyo said the report had helped crystallise the perception among some investors that SoftBank’s behaviour as a company increasingly resembled that of a hedge fund, populated with former investment bankers with a massive appetite for risk. Technology stocks that have powered US equities to record highs this summer went into sharp reverse on Thursday, sending the Nasdaq Composite index tumbling almost 5 per cent in its biggest fall since June. Apple’s shares lost 8 per cent — wiping more than $150bn from the iPhone maker’s value — while Amazon, Alphabet and Microsoft all fell more than 4 per cent. Several of the coronavirus era’s superstar stocks, such as Tesla and Zoom Video Communications, suffered even steeper drops. The pullback offered a reminder that the US equity market’s 55 per cent rally since the depths of the crisis in March is still vulnerable to short-term shocks The euro’s rise is worrying top policymakers at the European Central Bank, who warn that if the currency keeps appreciating it will weigh on exports, drag down prices and intensify pressure for more monetary stimulus. Several members of the ECB’s governing council told the Financial Times that the euro’s rise against the US dollar and many other currencies risks holding back the eurozone’s economic recovery. The council meets next week to discuss monetary policy. “In the last few weeks there has been an appreciation of the euro, which is always worrisome when you have weak demand, especially as the euro area is the most open economy in the world and unusually dependent on global demand,” said one council member. House prices soared to record highs last month, rising at their fastest pace in 16 years as the stamp duty holiday took effect and buyers sought new homes after months of living in lockdown. The Nationwide Building Society reported on Wednesday that UK house prices rose 2 per cent in nominal terms, despite the country entering its deepest recession on record in the second quarter. The surge in prices stemmed from the reopening of the housing market in May alongside the stamp duty holiday on property values of less than £500,000, announced in July, which runs until the end of next March. |
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