The Treaty Of Versailles

Just a day after announcing that the US would charge a 20% security fee for ships transiting the Strait of Hormuz, President Donald Trump reversed his decision under pressure from US allies.  On Monday, Trump asserted that the Strait would remain open to non-Iranian traffic, and the US would protect shipping. “The U.S.A. will be, […]

An Uncomfortable Reality: China's Rare Earth Chokehold May Outlast This Decade An inconvenient reality for the Trump administration's race to rebuild Western conflict-free critical materials supply chains outside China, whether domestically or through friendshoring, is that it won't break China's chokehold this decade. The main problem for the US lies well beyond the mine, ING analysts Ewa Manthey and Coco Zhang wrote in a note on Monday titled "The US rare earth push: what comes next?" Extracting more ore does very little for US companies that depend on Chinese processing plants to...

General Motors Shares Plunge 6% Despite $20 Billion Buyback Announcement And Earnings Beat General Motors shares are plunging more than 6% in premarket trading Tuesday, despite the automaker announcing a massive new $20 billion share repurchase program and reporting quarterly earnings that came in ahead of Wall Street expectations, according to Bloomberg News.  The selling comes as GM continues to grapple with a weakening U.S. auto market, where higher financing costs and pressure on household budgets have made it increasingly difficult to sell lower-priced vehicles. Demand for the company's more expensive...