Crypto News: China and Canada strike back

Good morning. China and Canada strike back as Trump's tariffs kick in. A bank's copy-paste error almost made someone $6 billion richer. And executives are changing their climate tune. Listen to the day's top stories.

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China hit back as Donald Trump's new tariffs came into effect. It imposed levies of up to 15% on American agricultural goods and banned exports to some defense companies, escalating a trade war between the world's two largest economies. Canada also retaliated, putting tariffs on $107 billion of US products.

In a shock development that looks set to heap more pressure on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Trump is working with Russia's Vladimir Putin to help broker talks with Iran on issues including its nuclear program. Trump earlier ordered a pause to all military aid to Ukraine, pending a good-faith commitment to peace from its leaders, and posing a setback for hopes of detente between Ukraine and Russia.

What Trump's Pause in Military Aid for Ukraine Means

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Checking in on markets. US futures were mixed in choppy trading. Investors will be watching for hints on future trade steps in the president's address to Congress today. Meanwhile, Treasuries have outperformed stocks since Trump was elected, as the haven bid to buy government debt has become clearer due to global trade frictions. The Trump Trade is back to where it was on Nov. 5.

Despite global trade tensions, Goldman Sachs Chief Executive Officer David Solomon believes there's a "very small" chance of the US economy entering a recession. Trump is acting on the view that imbalances exist in trade, Solomon said. Blackstone Chief Executive Officer Steve Schwarzman said his firm's survey shows the economy is in good shape, with none of the executives expecting a recession this year.

Always good to double check. Citigroup almost shifted about $6 billion to a customer's account by accident after a staffer handling the transfer copied and pasted the account number into a field for the dollar figure. Oops. The error invoked memories of the bank's Revlon incident in 2020, when Citigroup accidentally transferred more than $900 million to creditors of the cosmetics company.

Deep Dive: Climate Talk

Illustration by Melcher Oosterman

Donald Trump's return has prompted companies to stifle their climate talk with "greenhushing," the inverse of greenwashing, when firms exaggerate their green bona fides.

The president has pulled the US out of the Paris Agreement, frozen funding for green projects and fired staff from agencies that do climate work. Against that backdrop, US executives are dropping the mention of climate change in meetings.
Meanwhile, companies in Europe are also trying to keep their climate actions away from public sight, in an attempt to avoid accusations that they're overstating their environmental claims.
This comes as some big corporations have already scaled back their climate commitments. In January, Wall Street's top banks quit a group dedicated to helping lenders reduce their carbon footprints.

The Big Take

A girl helped by NGO Libertas International in Medellin, Colombia. Photographer: Federico Rios/Bloomberg

Meta, Match and Airbnb apps are being used to facilitate sex trafficking of minors in Colombia, where foreign tourists prey on vulnerable girls. The tech companies say they prohibit exploitation on their platforms, but local officials and child safety advocates argue more needs to be done to protect children.

The Big Take Podcast

The Apps Being Used for Colombian Sex Trafficking

Opinion

The Canada-US border in St-Bernard-de-Lacolle, Quebec, Canada Photographer: Andrej Ivanov/Bloomberg

It's hard to find anyone on Wall Street who thinks tariffs are a good idea, though it is possible that they're overreacting, John Authers writes. In Trump 2.0 trade policy, as in foreign policy, this is as big a shift as has been seen since World War II, and the opposition to tariffs may reflect a failure of imagination.

Before You Go

Birmingham City fans after the team was relegated to a lower division in 2024. Photographer: Nick Potts/PA Images/Getty Images

Let's check in on how Tom Brady's British project is going, the one at Birmingham City FC—an underperforming soccer club. It hasn't gone great, but the former hedge fund guy who's part of the ownership group has reasons to be optimistic. Because he believes that "failure frees people to reflect."

Better safe than sorry. SpaceX postponed the eighth test flight of its Starship rocket 40 seconds before liftoff due to technical issues. The company had aimed to repeat the midair catch of the Super Heavy booster and test Starship's satellite deployment capabilities.

One More

Fleetwood Mac Star Christine McVie's London Penthouse Hits the Market

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