(NEW YORK) — The price of bitcoin has tumbled about 12% from a record high reached earlier this week.
After topping $108,000 for the first time on Tuesday, the world’s largest cryptocurrency dropped to a price below $93,000 in early trading on Friday. Bitcoin soon recovered some of those losses, settling around $95,000 at 9:30 a.m. ET.
The selloff rippled through the wider cryptocurrency market. Ether, the second-largest cryptocurrency, ticked down about 1%. Lesser-known dogecoin fell 4% and crypto-trading exchange Coinbase fell nearly 2%.
The slide for bitcoin has largely come after the Federal Reserve announced late Wednesday that it expects fewer interest rate cuts next year.
Lower interest rates typically stimulate economic activity, drive up corporate profits and lift the value of forward-looking assets like stocks and cryptocurrencies. In theory, a longer-than-expected period of high interest rates could diminish those returns.
The Fed’s forecast sent stocks falling within minutes and helped push bitcoin to its lowest level in weeks.
The recent slide for bitcoin erases some of the gains enjoyed since the election of former President Donald Trump, who is widely viewed as friendly toward cryptocurrency. Still, the price has climbed about 36% since Election Day.
Bitcoin had climbed to a new high earlier this week after Trump reaffirmed support for a U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve.
A U.S. bitcoin strategic reserve would amount to a substantial government holding of bitcoin similar to the country’s stockpile of oil or gold. Bitcoin bulls expect such a potentially large acquisition of bitcoin to drive up demand and hike the price.
Supporters of a bitcoin strategic reserve also say the asset would help diversify the nation’s financial holdings, protecting it from the possible decline in value of other assets, such as the U.S. dollar.
Since the price of bitcoin is highly volatile, a large purchase of the asset could end up threatening the nation’s financial stability rather than safeguarding it, some critics say.
The major stock indexes rebounded on Thursday, recovering some of the losses they took after the Fed’s unwelcome forecast.
(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump this week vowed to block the purchase of U.S. Steel by Japanese steelmaker Nippon Steel Corp., promising to bolster the domestic steel industry with tariffs.
“I am totally against the once great and powerful U.S. Steel being bought by a foreign company, Trump said in a post on Truth Social, pledging to make U.S. Steel “Strong and Great Again, and it will happen FAST!”
Trump has proposed a tax as high as 20% on every product imported from all U.S. trading partners, as well as a tax of between 60% and 100% on all goods from China, the world’s leading steel producer.
Those policies could modestly improve the outlook for domestic steelmakers by hiking prices, boosting revenue and increasing employment, though the benefits would not lift the sector to the heights attained in its heyday, experts told ABC News.
The experts warned, however, that a potential rekindling of consumer price increases as a result of the wide-ranging tariffs could damage the steel industry as part of a wider economic slowdown.
The policies also risk harming the nation’s manufacturing sector as a whole, since the tariffs would hike costs for factories that rely on raw steel as an input, making those firms less competitive with their international counterparts, the experts said.
“We have tried to help the steel industry many, many times before,” Kyle Handley, a professor of economics at the University of California, San Diego, told ABC News, pointing to steel tariffs established during Trump’s first term and retained under President Joe Biden.
“Yet, here we are and the industry still needs more help,” Handley added.
In response to ABC News’ request for comment, the Trump transition team touted the tariffs imposed during his first term in office.
“In his first term, President Trump instituted tariffs against China that created jobs, spurred investment, and resulted in no inflation. President Trump will work quickly to fix and restore an economy that puts American workers [first] by re-shoring American jobs, lowering inflation, raising real wages, lowering taxes, cutting regulations, and unshackling American energy,” Trump transition spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
Tariffs remain popular with steel industry leaders. The Steel Manufacturers Association, or SMA, the largest U.S. trade association representing steelmakers, has urged the incoming Trump administration to strengthen steel tariffs.
“We are under constant threat from nonmarket economies who evade our trade laws to dump cheap, heavily subsidized, high-emissions steel and other products into the American market, making it hard for domestic manufacturers to compete,” SMA President Philip Bell said in a statement on Tuesday.
“Fortunately, President-elect Trump has vowed to use every tool he can to end unfair trade while stimulating growth in jobs and productivity,” Bell added.
In 2018, Trump slapped tariffs on aluminum and steel from a host of countries, including Mexico, Canada and the European Union.
Over the ensuing years, U.S. steel prices soared and output climbed.
The average price of a ton of hot-rolled steel — a common metric used for steel prices — soared from about $700 to $1,850 between 2017 and 2021, according to a study last year by the United States International Trade Commission, a government agency.
However, prices also spiked in non-U.S. steel markets over that period amid a global rise in demand, leaving only a modest impact from the tariffs, the study found. Steel production showed a similarly incremental advance, ticking upward by nearly 2% per year on average due to the tariffs, the study showed.
“It was a good thing for the steel industries because they were getting higher prices for steel and producing more,” Handley said.
The tariffs did not cause a sustained increase in employment for the steel industry, however, according to some data. Nationwide employment at steel and iron mills stood at 80,600 in 2017 — and registered the exact same number of workers last year, government data showed.
Technological advances in steel production have made the work less labor intensive, reducing the need for employees, Katheryn Russ, an economics professor at the University of California, Davis, told ABC News.
The proposed across-the-board tariffs could amplify the benefits for the steel industry that resulted from tariffs initiated during Trump’s first term, Russ said. But, she added, “It is unclear how it would affect employment in steel plants.”
Trump’s proposals would also intensify the negative effects that resulted from the first round of tariffs, including cost increases for a range of manufacturers that use raw steel as inputs, experts said. Those higher costs would hurt the competitiveness of such U.S. producers, risking lost revenue and potential layoffs, they added.
“Everybody who buys steel would now have higher costs,” Handley said. “We can have a debate about who should win or lose from that, but you can’t have everybody win.”
Economists widely forecast that tariffs of the magnitude proposed by Trump would also increase prices paid by U.S. shoppers, since importers typically pass along a share of the cost of those higher taxes to consumers.
A potential price spike risks slashing consumer purchases and slowing the economy, which would hurt a wide swath of businesses, including steel producers, Gordon Johnson, whose firm, GLJ Research, analyzes the steel industry, told ABC News.
“People will buy less of everything,” Johnson said. “That would be very bad for all U.S. businesses — steel companies as well.”
Still, Johnson said he understands the enduring cultural resonance of the steel industry, citing the phenomenon as a reason for why the sector receives attention from policymakers.
“When you say ‘steelworkers,’ you think of some guy who gets up at 6 a.m., gets McDonald’s coffee, puts on overalls and a big flannel and goes to work in the mill,” Johnson said. “He’s a hard worker and a quintessential U.S. citizen.”
He added, “Steel was a historic and traditional American staple. That’s why people care so much.”
(WASHINGTON) — A fresh inflation reading this week flashed a warning: Price increases are rising again, just when the Federal Reserve had appeared close to declaring “mission accomplished” in its yearslong fight to lower them.
In theory, the trend would prompt the Fed to raise rates, or at least hold them steady, when central bankers meet next week. High interest rates, after all, are the main tool the Fed has used to ratchet inflation down from its pandemic-era heights.
Instead, investors peg the chances of a rate cut next week at an overwhelming 98%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
The reason is clear, experts told ABC News: Interest rates will remain historically high even after a small cut. The Fed likely does not view a mild uptick of inflation this fall as enough to deviate from a path of rate cuts it laid out earlier this year, they added.
“I don’t think the recent inflation has diverged enough from what the Fed expected to change its outlook,” William English, a professor of finance at Yale University and a former Fed official, told ABC News.
Consumer prices rose 2.7% in November compared to a year ago, marking two consecutive months of rising inflation, government data this week showed.
Inflation has slowed dramatically from a peak of more than 9% in June 2022. But the recent uptick has reversed some progress made at the start of this year that had landed price increases right near the Fed’s target of 2%.
That progress had helped nudge the Fed toward its landmark shift to interest rate cuts.
In recent months, the Fed has cut its benchmark rate three-quarters of a percentage point, dialing back its fight against inflation and delivering some relief for borrowers saddled with high costs.
Even after the cuts, the benchmark rate stands between 4.5% and 4.75%, its highest level in nearly two decades. The high interest rates have kept borrowing costs high for everything from credit cards to mortgages.
The average interest rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage stands at nearly 6.7%, well above an average rate four years ago of 2.6%, Freddie Mac data shows.
A small rate cut by the Fed would not meaningfully reduce mortgage payments for new loans, Yeva Nersisyan, a professor of economics at Franklin & Marshall College, told ABC News. In turn, the rate decision poses little risk of boosting demand for big-ticket items, like homes, which make up prices most immediately sensitive to lower rates. Other prices operate on a prolonged lag in response to changes in interest rates, she added.
“In that sense, a quarter of a percentage point cut or not really wouldn’t make a difference for inflation,” Nersisyan said.
The anticipated rate cut also reflects the Fed’s consideration of employment, which makes up the other component of its dual mandate besides inflation, English said. The unemployment rate has increased this year from 3.7% to 4.2%, though it remains at a historically low level. Hiring has slowed down but remained solid.
Lower interest rates are meant to stimulate economic activity over the long term, keep the economy growing and safeguard the labor market.
“They’ve been trying to balance two risks: One is that the economy slows more than they thought, and the other is that inflation proves more stubborn than they thought,” English said.
Still, experts cautioned that the recent uptick in inflation may delay or alter plans for rate cuts next year.
“Starting next year, they probably will take a more cautious outlook,” Nersisyan said.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly half of U.S. states are set to raise their minimum wage at the outset of 2025, boosting pay for millions of workers stretching from California to Maine.
In all, 21 states will raise their wage floors on Jan. 1 in keeping with inflation-adjusted increases or as part of scheduled hikes that take effect at the beginning of each calendar year.
The pay increases will affect about 9.2 million workers, who will gain a combined $5.7 billion over the course of 2025, according to the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, or EPI.
After the wave of wage hikes, Washington will become the state with the highest minimum wage, offering workers $16.66 per hour. Workers in California and New York will enjoy the second-highest wage floor, as both states implement a minimum hourly wage of $16.50.
Pay increases set to take hold in the new year will bring the wage floor to $15 an hour or higher in Washington, D.C., as well as 10 states, among them Delaware, Illinois and Rhode Island. Those areas play host to one of every three U.S. workers, EPI found.
Overall, the states set to raise their minimum wage on Wednesday include: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Virginia and Washington.
The nation’s highest wage floors will take effect in some of the nearly 50 cities and other localities that will impose minimum pay hikes.
Twenty-nine cities in California will see pay hikes, including a $17-an-hour wage floor that will take effect in Oakland. Seven localities in Washington will increase their minimum wage, among them the country’s highest wage floor: $21.10 an hour in Tukwila.
The latest round of pay increases, however, will not affect more than a dozen states concentrated in the South that lack a minimum wage or offer a minimum wage that does not exceed the federal minimum of $7.25 per hour.
The last federal minimum wage hike took place in 2009, when Congress raised the pay floor to its current level. When adjusted for inflation, the federal minimum wage stands at its lowest level since February 1956, nearly 70 years ago, EPI found.
