China priced the yuan's reference rate at 6.9683 to the dollar, a hair above the target 7:1 ratio to the US dollar. Although that was the weakest level for the yuan in 11 years, many Wall Street investors feared China would price the yuan below that psychological 7:1 barrier.
The yuan, which trades more freely outside China, continued to fall below the barrier on the open market (to 7.07 to the dollar), but investors were still encouraged that the damage wasn't considerably worse.
Stock futures also got a boost after the Chinese central bank announced plans to issue central bank bills worth 30 billion yuan next week. That supported China's currency, which bounced back slightly against the dollar after the announcement.
Futures erased an earlier 600-point plunge. Stock futures initially tumbled Monday evening after the United States labeled China a currency manipulator.
Investors feared the label would eliminate China's incentive to keep the yuan above the 7:1 ratio to the dollar, setting off a currency war with the United States. A further devaluation of the yuan could ease the burden of America's tariffs on China. Wall Street fears a steep drop in the yuan could escalate the trade war, prompting the United States to raise its tariffs on China.
Dow(INDU) futures implied the market would open slightly higher. The S&P 500(SPX) futures rose 0.8% and Nasdaq(COMP) futures were up 0.9%.
US stocks posted their worst day of 2019 on Monday, with the Dow plunging 767 points. The Nasdaq was the worst hit, because tech stocks would be hit particularly hard by an escalation in the trade war.
European stocks recovered somewhat Tuesday, and Asian stocks closed a bit lower.
A woman walks past the headquarters of the People's Bank of China in Beijing, China.
Jason Lee | Reuters
China's central bank has firmly rejected the U.S. Treasury's designation of Beijing as a currency manipulator, saying the accusation has "seriously" undermined the international financial order and risked further market turmoil.
The response from the People's Bank of China (PBOC) comes at a time of rapidly intensifying tensions between the world's two largest economies.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury accused Beijing of deliberately influencing the exchange rate between the yuan and the U.S. dollar to gain an "unfair competitive advantage in international trade."
The move fulfills President Donald Trump's promise to recognize China as a currency manipulator for the first time since 1994.
The announcement followed a sharp drop in the yuan against the dollar, with the Chinese currency breaching the 7-per-dollar level for the first time since 2008.
China's central bank set the yuan's official reference point at stronger than the key 7 yuan-to-the-dollar point on Tuesday.
Late last week, China promised to fight back after Trump vowed to impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.
"The United States disregards the facts and unreasonably affixes China with the label of 'currency manipulators,' which is a behavior that harms others and oneself," the PBOC said in a statement on Tuesday, before adding: "The Chinese side firmly opposes this."
The PBOC said it would not only "seriously undermine the international financial order, but also trigger financial market turmoil. It will also greatly hinder international trade and the global economic recovery, and ultimately will suffer from it."
Unfair advantage
Even before the formal designation, Trump took to Twitter to voice his opinion, accusing Beijing of manipulating its currency and saying it would "greatly weaken China over time!"
The next step is for the U.S. to make its case to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but it's not likely to lead to formal penalties.
The manipulator label is mostly symbolic and matters more as a slight to one of the United States' biggest creditors and an escalation in the trade war.
The Treasury Department's announcement hinged upon a 1988 portion of federal law that permits the U.S. Treasury Secretary to work with the IMF to "eliminate the unfair advantage" associated with currency manipulation.
'Return to the correct track of rationality'
"This unilateral act of the United States also undermines the global multilateral consensus on exchange rate issues and has a serious negative impact on the stable operation of the international monetary system," the PBOC said
"The Chinese side advises the U.S. to leap over the cliffs and return to the correct track of rationality."
Since the trade war started last year, Washington has imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion worth of U.S. imports from China. Beijing retaliated by slapping elevated levies on billions of dollars of American products that it buys.
In recent months, however, tensions between the two countries have extended beyond trade and into areas such as technology and security. In particular, the U.S. placed Huawei on a blacklist which made it more difficult for the Chinese tech giant to do business with American companies.
A woman walks past the headquarters of the People's Bank of China in Beijing, China.
Jason Lee | Reuters
China's central bank has firmly rejected the U.S. Treasury's designation of Beijing as a currency manipulator, saying the accusation has "seriously" undermined the international financial order and risked further market turmoil.
The response from the People's Bank of China (PBOC) comes at a time of rapidly intensifying tensions between the world's two largest economies.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury accused Beijing of deliberately influencing the exchange rate between the yuan and the U.S. dollar to gain an "unfair competitive advantage in international trade."
The move fulfills President Donald Trump's promise to recognize China as a currency manipulator for the first time since 1994.
The announcement followed a sharp drop in the yuan against the dollar, with the Chinese currency breaching the 7-per-dollar level for the first time since 2008.
China's central bank set the yuan's official reference point at stronger than the key 7 yuan-to-the-dollar point on Tuesday.
Late last week, China promised to fight back after Trump vowed to impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.
"The United States disregards the facts and unreasonably affixes China with the label of 'currency manipulators,' which is a behavior that harms others and oneself," the PBOC said in a statement on Tuesday, before adding: "The Chinese side firmly opposes this."
The PBOC said it would not only "seriously undermine the international financial order, but also trigger financial market turmoil. It will also greatly hinder international trade and the global economic recovery, and ultimately will suffer from it."
Unfair advantage
Even before the formal designation, Trump took to Twitter to voice his opinion, accusing Beijing of manipulating its currency and saying it would "greatly weaken China over time!"
The next step is for the U.S. to make its case to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), but it's not likely to lead to formal penalties.
The manipulator label is mostly symbolic and matters more as a slight to one of the United States' biggest creditors and an escalation in the trade war.
The Treasury Department's announcement hinged upon a 1988 portion of federal law that permits the U.S. Treasury Secretary to work with the IMF to "eliminate the unfair advantage" associated with currency manipulation.
'Return to the correct track of rationality'
"This unilateral act of the United States also undermines the global multilateral consensus on exchange rate issues and has a serious negative impact on the stable operation of the international monetary system," the PBOC said
"The Chinese side advises the U.S. to leap over the cliffs and return to the correct track of rationality."
Since the trade war started last year, Washington has imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion worth of U.S. imports from China. Beijing retaliated by slapping elevated levies on billions of dollars of American products that it buys.
In recent months, however, tensions between the two countries have extended beyond trade and into areas such as technology and security. In particular, the U.S. placed Huawei on a blacklist which made it more difficult for the Chinese tech giant to do business with American companies.
Apple CEO Tim Cook said the Apple Card would arrive in August on the company’s last earnings call, and here it is: Apple’s new credit card, issued in partnership with Goldman Sachs, will begin a “preview rollout” today, and then become broadly available to all iPhone owners in the US later this month.
Apple says a random selection of people who signed up to be notified about the Apple Card will be invited to sign up today, although the company won’t disclose exactly how many people will be in the preview group. The signup process, which requires iOS 12.4, involves entering your address, birthday, income level, and last four digits of your Social Security number. That information is sent to Goldman Sachs, which will approve or decline your application in real time — Apple says it should take less than a minute. (There’s a TransUnion credit check involved, so if you’ve locked that info you’ll have to unlock it.)
Apple says the Apple Card is not meant to directly compete with premium cards like the Chase Sapphire or American Express Platinum cards — the goal is to be broadly accessible to every iPhone owner, so the signup requirements will not be as strict as those cards.
Once you’ve been approved, your new card will show up in your Apple Wallet immediately and be available for use — you can request Apple’s fancy titanium card for free during setup and it will arrive in the mail later. Setting that card up is neat: the envelope it’s in has an NFC tag, so you just tap the phone to it and it activates automatically, no phone call or sticker required.
I got to hold the card itself and it is very nice, although it is fairly thick and felt a little bit heavier than the typical metal credit card. You can use the card without your phone nearby like any other card, but it doesn’t support contactless payments — Apple obviously wants you to use your phone or watch for that.
Once you’re all set up, you will actually have three credit card numbers associated with your Apple Card: the number assigned to your phone, the number assigned to the physical card, and a virtual number you can access in the app for online merchants that don’t take Apple Pay. You can request a new virtual number at any time. The card itself doesn’t have a expiration date or security code, and it doesn’t have a number printed on it, but you can lock the card if you misplace it or deactivate it entirely from the Wallet app with a single tap.
The Apple Card interface in the Wallet app is extremely nice: it provides detailed information about all your purchases, using machine learning to clean up merchant names and categorize your spending over time. You can set payment schedules in a variety of ways, play with a circular slider to see exactly how much interest you’ll be charged at various, and see how much you’re spending weekly and monthly.
Compared to something like Intuit’s Mint, it’s definitely smarter and simpler, but it’s also limited to just one card, so its overall utility is a little limited if you have any other cards or payments in your life to manage.
Apple isn’t charging any late fees, annual fees, or international fees on this card, and it says that it doesn’t see any of your purchase data at all — all that transaction data cleanup and categorization happens locally on your phone. Goldman Sachs can obviously see that data since it has to approve or decline purchases, but Apple says it’s entered into a special privacy agreement with Goldman that restricts Apple Card purchase data from being used for anything other than operating the card itself — it can’t be used for advertising, sold to third parties, or anything else.
Apple’s rewards program is much simpler than any other major card: the company offers 3 percent cash back on any Apple transaction, from the Apple Store to the App Store to even iCloud storage, 2 percent on any Apple Pay transactions, and 1 percent on purchases made with the physical card or virtual card number. That cash hits your Apple Pay Cash account every day, and you can use it to pay off your balance, send it to friends, or transfer it a bank.
It’s a little skimpier than other premium card perks like access to airline lounges, concierge services, and so on, but Apple believes the simplicity and speed of just getting cash back will entice premium card customers who are frustrated with complicated points schemes to switch, while the payment and financial health features will appeal to everyone else. (Basically: people with less money.)
There has been some fierce criticism of Apple’s fairly standard APR, which starts at 12.99 percent and goes up to 24.24 percent, but Apple says its goal is to be among the lowest possible rates you can qualify for. This is impossible to know until people start signing up, but it’s fair to say that this is still a credit card, and you should definitely treat it like one, regardless of how good the software looks.
And just like any other credit card, while it’s easy to sign up for an Apple Card and easy to spend money with it, it’s not necessarily easy to get rid of it: canceling an Apple Card requires messaging or calling Goldman Sachs.
That’s actually the most interesting thing about the Apple Card, and the thing we’ll see shake out as people get them: Apple is providing a lot of the user experience of the card, but the card itself is still a credit card issued by Goldman Sachs, and when you click the support button in Apple Wallet, you’ll be chatting with Goldman Sachs reps. Apple says the two companies are working very closely together, and that Goldman Sachs employees are being trained using Apple tools and technologies, including specific language around helping people understand credit issues. Basically, Apple says this is much more than just a very nice front-end to a Goldman Sachs card — it’s a product Apple has designed like any other.
But the end of the day, Apple can’t issue a credit card without a bank, and Goldman Sachs is that bank. We’ll just have to see how the experience of the Apple Card matches up with the high expectations of Apple customers.
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to journalists while departing the White House August 01, 2019 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio, for a campaign rally.
Goldman Sachs no longer believes the world's two largest economies will be able to resolve their long-running trade dispute before the U.S. presidential election next year.
It comes shortly after the U.S. officially designated China as a "currency manipulator, " amid rapidly intensifying tensions between the two economic giants.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury accused Beijing of deliberately influencing the exchange rate between the yuan and the U.S. dollar to gain an "unfair competitive advantage in international trade."
Late last week, China promised to fight back after President Donald Trump vowed to impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs, led by Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, said in a research note published late Monday that they had anticipated this move.
"News since President Trump's tariff announcement last Thursday indicates that U.S. and Chinese policymakers are taking a harder line, and we no longer expect a trade deal before the 2020 election."
'A trade deal now looks far off'
In targeting the roughly $300 billion worth of Chinese goods that had not already been targeted by American levies, the U.S. president overruled the adamant objections of nearly his entire trade team, according to a report published by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. is set to impose the charges against Beijing from September 1.
"While we had previously assumed that President Trump would see making a deal as more advantageous to his 2020 re-election prospects, we are now less confident that this is his view," analysts at Goldman Sachs said.
The investment bank added China's decision to suspend purchases of U.S. agricultural goods and its decision to allow the yuan to breach the psychologically-important level of 7-per-dollar "added up to a swift and meaningful response" to Trump's latest tariff threat.
Citing reports that Chinese policymakers are increasingly inclined not to make major concessions and instead are prepared to wait until after the 2020 U.S. presidential election to resolve the dispute if necessary, Goldman said "a trade deal now looks far off."
Since the trade war started last year, Washington has imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion worth of U.S. imports from China. Beijing retaliated by slapping elevated levies on billions of dollars of American products that it buys.
In recent months, however, tensions between the two countries have extended beyond trade and into areas such as technology and security. In particular, the U.S. placed Huawei on a blacklist which made it more difficult for the Chinese tech giant to do business with American companies.
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to journalists while departing the White House August 01, 2019 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio, for a campaign rally.
Goldman Sachs no longer believes the world's two largest economies will be able to resolve their long-running trade dispute before the U.S. presidential election next year.
It comes shortly after the U.S. officially designated China as a "currency manipulator, " amid rapidly intensifying tensions between the two economic giants.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury accused Beijing of deliberately influencing the exchange rate between the yuan and the U.S. dollar to gain an "unfair competitive advantage in international trade."
Late last week, China promised to fight back after President Donald Trump vowed to impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs, led by Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, said in a research note published late Monday that they had anticipated this move.
"News since President Trump's tariff announcement last Thursday indicates that U.S. and Chinese policymakers are taking a harder line, and we no longer expect a trade deal before the 2020 election."
'A trade deal now looks far off'
In targeting the roughly $300 billion worth of Chinese goods that had not already been targeted by American levies, the U.S. president overruled the adamant objections of nearly his entire trade team, according to a report published by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. is set to impose the charges against Beijing from September 1.
"While we had previously assumed that President Trump would see making a deal as more advantageous to his 2020 re-election prospects, we are now less confident that this is his view," analysts at Goldman Sachs said.
The investment bank added China's decision to suspend purchases of U.S. agricultural goods and its decision to allow the yuan to breach the psychologically-important level of 7-per-dollar "added up to a swift and meaningful response" to Trump's latest tariff threat.
Citing reports that Chinese policymakers are increasingly inclined not to make major concessions and instead are prepared to wait until after the 2020 U.S. presidential election to resolve the dispute if necessary, Goldman said "a trade deal now looks far off."
Since the trade war started last year, Washington has imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion worth of U.S. imports from China. Beijing retaliated by slapping elevated levies on billions of dollars of American products that it buys.
In recent months, however, tensions between the two countries have extended beyond trade and into areas such as technology and security. In particular, the U.S. placed Huawei on a blacklist which made it more difficult for the Chinese tech giant to do business with American companies.
U.S. President Donald Trump talks to journalists while departing the White House August 01, 2019 in Washington, DC. Trump is traveling to Cincinnati, Ohio, for a campaign rally.
Goldman Sachs no longer believes the world's two largest economies will be able to resolve their long-running trade dispute before the U.S. presidential election next year.
It comes shortly after the U.S. officially designated China as a "currency manipulator, " amid rapidly intensifying tensions between the two economic giants.
On Monday, the U.S. Treasury accused Beijing of deliberately influencing the exchange rate between the yuan and the U.S. dollar to gain an "unfair competitive advantage in international trade."
Late last week, China promised to fight back after President Donald Trump vowed to impose 10% tariffs on $300 billion worth of Chinese imports.
Analysts at Goldman Sachs, led by Chief Economist Jan Hatzius, said in a research note published late Monday that they had anticipated this move.
"News since President Trump's tariff announcement last Thursday indicates that U.S. and Chinese policymakers are taking a harder line, and we no longer expect a trade deal before the 2020 election."
'A trade deal now looks far off'
In targeting the roughly $300 billion worth of Chinese goods that had not already been targeted by American levies, the U.S. president overruled the adamant objections of nearly his entire trade team, according to a report published by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday, citing people familiar with the matter.
The U.S. is set to impose the charges against Beijing from September 1.
"While we had previously assumed that President Trump would see making a deal as more advantageous to his 2020 re-election prospects, we are now less confident that this is his view," analysts at Goldman Sachs said.
The investment bank added China's decision to suspend purchases of U.S. agricultural goods and its decision to allow the yuan to breach the psychologically-important level of 7-per-dollar "added up to a swift and meaningful response" to Trump's latest tariff threat.
Citing reports that Chinese policymakers are increasingly inclined not to make major concessions and instead are prepared to wait until after the 2020 U.S. presidential election to resolve the dispute if necessary, Goldman said "a trade deal now looks far off."
Since the trade war started last year, Washington has imposed 25% tariffs on $250 billion worth of U.S. imports from China. Beijing retaliated by slapping elevated levies on billions of dollars of American products that it buys.
In recent months, however, tensions between the two countries have extended beyond trade and into areas such as technology and security. In particular, the U.S. placed Huawei on a blacklist which made it more difficult for the Chinese tech giant to do business with American companies.
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