2025-06-12 20:35

June 12 (Reuters) - Coinbase (COIN.O) , opens new tab plans to launch perpetual futures trading in the United States, with the offering set to comply with regulatory standards outlined by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, a top executive at the crypto exchange said on Thursday. With crypto markets buoyed by hopes of lighter regulation and a renewed risk appetite, exchanges are racing to capitalize on the frenzy by rolling out complex products that were once used primarily by seasoned traders. Sign up here. "We recently launched first-of-its-kind 24/7 futures trading, and I'm excited to share that we'll soon be launching CFTC-compliant perpetual futures trading in the U.S. as well," Max Branzburg, Coinbase's vice-president of product, said at the State of Crypto Summit in New York. Perpetual futures are crypto derivatives that allow traders to bet on token prices without an expiry date and offer round-the-clock access and high leverage, making them a popular choice in fast-moving markets. Investors and traders typically use derivatives to hedge risk, amplify returns, or speculate on price movements without owning the underlying asset. https://www.reuters.com/business/coinbase-launch-cftc-compliant-perpetual-futures-trading-us-2025-06-12/

2025-06-12 20:30

Trump says farmers 'hurt badly' following immigration crackdown Farms heavily reliant on migrant labor Hotel sector also to be addressed, Trump says No details given on content or timing of order WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said he would issue an order soon to address the effects of his immigration crackdown on the country's farm and hotel industries, which rely heavily on migrant labor. "Our farmers are being hurt badly and we're going to have to do something about that... We're going to have an order on that pretty soon, I think," Trump said at a White House event, adding that the order would address the hotels sector, too. Sign up here. He did not say what changes the order would implement or when it would take effect. Representatives for the White House and Department of Homeland Security had no specific comment about the order, while representatives at the Department of Agriculture could not be immediately reached. "We will follow the president's direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America's streets," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. U.S. farm industry groups have long wanted Trump to spare their sector from mass deportations, which could upend a food supply chain dependent on immigrants. Nearly half of the nation's approximately 2 million farm workers and many dairy and meatpacking workers lack legal status, according to the departments of Labor and Agriculture. U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins told CNBC that Trump was reviewing all possible steps but that Congress would have to act. Zippy Duvall, president of the American Farm Bureau Federation, a leading farm lobby, said on Thursday that farm workers were key to the nation's food supply. "If these workers are not present in fields and barns, there is a risk of supply-chain disruptions similar to those experienced during the pandemic," Duvall said in a statement. The COVID-19 pandemic resulted in labor shortages and supply-chain snarls, with meat plants , opens new tab forced to idle and dairy farms , opens new tab to dump milk, and consumers encountering emptier shelves at grocery stores. In recent days, demonstrations have been taking place in major U.S. cities to protest immigration raids. Trump is carrying out his campaign promise to deport immigrants in the country illegally. But protesters and some Trump supporters have questioned the targeting of those who are not convicted criminals, including in places of employment such as those that sparked last week's protests in Los Angeles. On Thursday, Trump acknowledged the impact of the crackdown on sectors such as the hotel industry, which includes his company. The Trump Organization has said Trump's adult sons are running his business. "Our great Farmers and people in the Hotel and Leisure business have been stating that our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long time workers away from them, with those jobs being almost impossible to replace," he wrote on his social media platform. "Changes are coming!" Farmers have a legal option for hiring temporary or seasonal labor with the H-2A visa program, which allows employers to bring in seasonal workers if they can show there are not enough U.S. workers willing, qualified and available to do the job. Rollins said Trump was "looking at every potential tool in the toolkit" and pointed to the length of the temporary H-2A visas. "The president understands that we can't feed our nation or the world without that labor force, and he's listening to the farmers on that," she told CNBC. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-promises-immigration-order-soon-farm-leisure-workers-2025-06-12/

2025-06-12 20:19

Boeing shares fall after Air India plane crash Oracle up after raising its annual revenue forecast S&P 500 +0.38%, Nasdaq +0.24%, Dow +0.24% June 12 (Reuters) - The S&P 500 ended higher on Thursday after a strong outlook from Oracle fueled optimism around artificial intelligence, offsetting worries about tension in the Middle East and a drop in Boeing shares. Oracle (ORCL.N) , opens new tab surged 13.3% to record highs after the cloud service provider raised its annual revenue growth forecast, driven by strong demand for its AI-related services. Sign up here. Heavyweight tech companies Microsoft (MSFT.O) , opens new tab, Nvidia (NVDA.O) , opens new tab and Broadcom (AVGO.O) , opens new tab rose over 1%. "Oracle is another piece in the mosaic of AI capex spending and the ongoing need for more compute that feeds into the AI revolution," said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth. "When the winds blow in that direction, you're definitely going to see the key players like Microsoft and Nvidia also catch that tailwind." Signs of rising tensions in the Middle East also weighed on global markets. U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that U.S. personnel were being moved out of the region as it could be a "dangerous place" and the United States would not allow Iran to have a nuclear weapon. Officials from both countries are scheduled to meet in Oman on Sunday for a sixth round of nuclear talks. The S&P 500 climbed 0.38% to end the session at 6,045.26 points. The Nasdaq gained 0.24% to 19,662.49 points, while the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.24% to 42,967.62 points. Volume on U.S. exchanges was heavy, with 23.5 billion shares traded, compared with an average of 18.0 billion shares over the previous 20 sessions. Of the 11 S&P 500 sector indexes, eight rose, led by utilities (.SPLRCU) , opens new tab, up 1.26%, followed by a 1.01% gain in information technology (.SPLRCT) , opens new tab. U.S.-listed shares of gold miners also advanced, as bullion prices hit a one-week high. Newmont (NEM.N) , opens new tab gained 4.9%, Harmony Gold was up 4.1% and AngloGold Ashanti (AU.N) , opens new tab rose 6.4%. Softer-than-expected producer price data and initial jobless claims numbers pointing to a potential weakening in the labor market helped reduce investor jitters around tariff-driven price pressures, while also boosting expectations the U.S. Federal Reserve will cut interest rates. Traders project a 60% chance of a 25-basis-point cut by September, according to the CME Group's FedWatch tool. Fed policymakers are widely expected to keep rates unchanged at next week's policy meeting. With investors expecting Trump to reach trade agreements with several countries in the coming weeks, the benchmark S&P 500 index (.SPX) , opens new tab is about 2% below its February record high. Goldman Sachs trimmed its U.S. recession probability to 30% from 35% on easing uncertainty around Trump's tariff policies. Advancing issues outnumbered falling ones within the S&P 500 (.AD.SPX) , opens new tab by a 1.5-to-one ratio. The S&P 500 posted 12 new highs and 3 new lows; the Nasdaq recorded 54 new highs and 63 new lows. https://www.reuters.com/world/china/wall-street-futures-slip-middle-east-tensions-rise-boeing-falls-2025-06-12/

2025-06-12 19:59

EPA to propose biomass-based diesel quotas below 5.25 billion gallons, sources say Proposal covers 2026 and 2027 blending requirements, sources said Industry awaits EPA decision on small refinery exemptions in paragraph 13 NEW YORK, June 12 - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Friday will propose new biofuel blending requirements for oil refiners for the coming two years that will likely include a lower biomass-based diesel mandate than industry groups had requested, according to four sources familiar with the matter. The White House has completed its review of the EPA's plan and returned it to the EPA for further action, according to the website for the Office of Management and Budget. The EPA is expected to announce the proposal on Friday, the sources said. Sign up here. The oil and biofuel industries, both major lobbying powers in Washington, have highly anticipated the release of the proposal, which will determine the fate of billions of dollars in fuel and tradable credit transactions. Under the Renewable Fuel Standard, refiners are required to blend massive volumes of biofuels into the nation's fuel supply or purchase credits, called RINs, from those that do. As one of the first decisions the current Trump administration makes regarding federal biofuel policy, the proposal will also give insight into whether President Donald Trump will bolster the biofuel industry, which has at times been at odds with oil companies. The EPA's proposal is expected to cover both 2026 and 2027, Reuters previously reported. The biomass-based diesel blending requirements are a major focus of the proposal for industry participants, as some believed previous obligations were too low. A U.S. and biofuel coalition led by the American Petroleum Institute advocated in recent months that the EPA propose federal mandates for biomass diesel blending for 2026 at 5.25 billion gallons, which would be a significant increase from previous mandates, Reuters previously reported, citing sources. However, sources told Reuters on Thursday that the EPA was expected to propose biomass-based diesel blending quotas lower than 5.25 billion gallons. The EPA had set biomass-based diesel mandates for the 2025 compliance year at 3.35 billion gallons. The coalition, which brought some oil and biofuel groups together in a historically unusual move, had also recommended total federal biofuel blending mandates for 2026 - including corn-based ethanol and advanced biofuels - at 25 billion gallons. The EPA did not comment on the quota levels. Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, a biofuels advocate and the second-highest-ranking official in the Senate, posted on social media platform X in response to Reuters' report. "If Pres Trump wants 5 closed biodiesel plants to reopen & jobs in rural America we've got to hv the 5.25 BILLION for biodiesel," he posted. The agency said it would post the proposal on the EPA's website once Administrator Lee Zeldin signs it. Biomass-based (D4) credits were bid at 96 and 97 cents each, down from trading at 102 cents each on Wednesday. Renewable fuel (D6) credits for 2025 traded at 92.5 cents on Thursday, down from 94.5 cents and 95 cents each on Wednesday, traders said. Industry participants are also awaiting indication on how the EPA will address outstanding requests from small refineries for exemptions to the mandates. Small refiners can seek exemptions to the obligations if they can prove the requirements would cause them undue harm. The White House is weighing a plan to clear a record backlog of those requests, Reuters previously reported, citing sources, which could include approving many current applications and requesting industry input to deal with older ones. There are more than 160 outstanding requests for exemptions that represent potentially billions of dollars worth of tradable credits. https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/white-house-completes-review-epas-biofuel-blending-obligation-proposal-2025-06-12/

2025-06-12 19:44

June 12 (Reuters) - Alphabet's (GOOGL.O) , opens new tab Google said on Thursday it had resolved a brief global service disruption on its platforms that affected multiple services such as music streamer Spotify (SPOT.N) , opens new tab and instant messaging provider Discord. "The issue with Google Chat, Google Meet, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Drive, Google Cloud Search, Google Tasks, Google Voice has been resolved for all affected users," the company said. "We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation." Sign up here. The outage disrupted services on platforms such as Spotify, Snapchat and Discord that rely on the tech giant's cloud managed services and infrastructure. Google Cloud's dashboard said engineering teams were working to resolve a few services still seeing some residual impact. The outage began around 1:50 p.m. ET and there were 14,729 reports of Google Cloud being down in the U.S. around 2:32 p.m. ET, according to tracking website Downdetector.com. At the peak of the disruption, there were about 46,000 outage reports on Spotify and 10,992 on Discord in the U.S. As of 6:18 p.m. ET, Spotify showed a little over 1,000 reports, while Discord outages had come down to 200. Downdetector's numbers are based on user-submitted reports. The outage might have affected a larger number of users. https://www.reuters.com/business/google-cloud-down-thousands-users-downdetector-shows-2025-06-12/

2025-06-12 19:05

Republican fight against green energy tax credit hits miners too Tax credit for critical minerals was part of Biden climate bill China halted exports of some minerals, created gluts of others Owner of the only American cobalt mine went bankrupt this year WASHINGTON, June 12 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump's tax and spending bill would make it harder for American critical minerals companies to compete with China because it eliminates a tax credit for boosting domestic production of nickel, rare earths and other materials used in advanced electronics and weaponry. With Trump and Republican lawmakers aiming to cut government support for green energy projects, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a version of his "One Big Beautiful Bill Act" last month that eliminates the so-called 45X credit. The Senate is now debating the bill. Sign up here. Former President Joe Biden's 2022 climate change law, the Inflation Reduction Act, created the 10% production credit - a reduction in corporate taxes for critical minerals extraction and processing. The tax break also covers solar, battery and wind projects. The version of the bill that passed the House treats government incentives for wind turbines the same as those for mining projects that many view as crucial for national security. Critical minerals companies now say their projects are collateral damage to the political feud over renewable energy. The tax credit is already law and part of the current federal budget. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, which scores the cost of legislative proposals when asked by Congress, has not studied how much would be saved by removing the credit. The Republican majority in Congress is seeking savings to fund other priorities such as tax cuts, defense and balancing the budget. This month, the hard-right House Freedom Caucus said it "will not accept" , opens new tab attempts to "water down, strip out, or walk back the hard-fought spending reductions and IRA Green New Scam rollbacks achieved in this legislation." Miners, though, say they need the credit to compete with China. Beijing has halted exports of some critical minerals, used its control of rare earths to strike a trade agreement with Washington, and flooded global markets with cheap supply of nickel, cobalt and lithium. The traditionally conservative mining industry now finds itself in the unusual position of needing Washington's support to grow and, in some cases, survive. The owner of the only U.S. cobalt mine went bankrupt this year after Chinese miners depressed global prices of that metal. "If we do not have that tax credit, critical minerals producers in the U.S. are at risk of succumbing to closures," said KaLeigh Long, founder and CEO of Westwin Elements, which is building the country's only commercial nickel refinery. Westwin might not be able to service its debt without the tax credit, Long said, noting the company's loans were modeled using the expectation it would be permanent. Last month, Long wrote a letter asking the Senate to keep the credit. It was co-signed by 30 industry executives. Any changes the Senate makes to the bill must be reconciled with the House version before being sent to Trump. Several House members have admitted they did not read the entire bill before voting for it, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green, a Georgia Republican, and Congressman Mike Flood, a Nebraska Republican. The House version does include $2.5 billion to fund a critical minerals stockpile and $500 million for a Pentagon mining loan program, although large mines often cost far more. House Democrats unanimously voted against the bill but their criticism has focused on tax cuts they say will widen the deficit while requiring cuts in health care, food assistance, education, scientific research and other programs. "There's so many issues right now under consideration in Congress and this one isn't breaking through, but it will certainly break through when we have a shortage of minerals in five years," said Jeff Green, a critical minerals industry consultant. Senator John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat who voted for the IRA in 2022, said in a statement to Reuters that cutting the credit would "kill jobs ... just to fund tax breaks for the ultra-weathy" and would be a "bad deal" for the country. Trump, who has issued several executive orders aimed at boosting U.S. minerals production, has not commented publicly on the 45x debate. A White House official said the administration would only support IRA provisions like the 45X tax credit if they focus on the president's priorities. "The tax credit just adds a phenomenal bump to a project's economics and gives us advantages that China already gives its own companies," said Alex Grant, CEO of magnesium processing startup Magrathea, who signed the letter. China controls most of the world's production of the metal, used in alloys for steel and aluminum. Abigail Hunter, executive director of SAFE's Center for Critical Minerals Strategy, described the tax credit as the "only tool currently available to support industry exposed to market manipulation." The House version also removes any remaining IRA funding for the U.S. Department of Energy's Loan Programs Office (LPO), which under Biden awarded billions of dollars in loans to Nevada lithium projects from ioneer (INR.AX) , opens new tab and Lithium Americas (LAC.TO) , opens new tab. Potential for the LPO's closure led miners to rush to finalize loans last year, as Reuters reported in August. Republican senators this week said they were in discussions about how to extend some green energy tax credits, especially for businesses with large capital investments. No firm commitments have been made. For Mahesh Konduru, CEO of minerals processing startup Momentum Technologies, the credit is one way for Washington to show industry support. "We need to have the appropriate tools to build, nurture and grow that supply chain inside the United States," he said. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trumps-tax-cut-bill-could-hold-back-us-critical-minerals-projects-2025-06-12/