US President Donald Trump said on Twitter on Friday that he was quite happy with US Secretary of the Treasury Steven Mnuchin’s performance, after the Wall Street Journal reported that he was dissatisfied with Mnuchin.
“I am extremely happy and proud of the job being done by @USTreasury Secretary @stevenmnuchin1,” Trump tweeted.
The Journal reported that Trump blames Mnuchin for the appointment of US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, who has been steadily raising US interest rates.
Trump is concerned that higher rates could undercut economic gains ahead of his 2020 re-election bid, the newspaper reported.
Quoting unnamed sources, the Journal said that Trump has also expressed displeasure with Mnuchin over stock market turbulence and the Treasury secretary’s skepticism about the White House trade actions against China.
“The FAKE NEWS likes to write stories to the contrary, quoting phony sources or jealous people, but they aren’t true. They never like to ask me for a quote b/c it would kill their story,” Trump tweeted.
Trump has repeatedly criticized the Fed’s rate increases under Powell.
Last month, he called the Fed “crazy,” “ridiculous” and “my biggest threat.”
A year ago, when Trump picked Powell to head the Fed, Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc banker, was a strong advocate of his nomination.
The Wall Street Journal, citing a person familiar with the matter, said Trump, in a conversation with someone who praised Mnuchin’s performance, mentioned stock market volatility and said: “If he’s so good, why is this happening?”
The benchmark Standard & Poor’s 500 index on Friday ended down 10.2 percent from its Sept. 20 closing high, confirming that it had entered a correction, a term used to describe a decline of at least 10 percent from the previous peak.
When the stock market has posted big gains, Trump has frequently tweeted about Wall Street’s performance.
On Oct. 2, he tweeted: “The Stock Market just reached an All-Time High during my Administration for the 102nd Time, a presidential record, by far, for less than two years.”
The Journal said Mnuchin has tried to moderate Trump’s policy in the trade dispute with China. The Republican president, seeking to slash a US$375 billion trade gap with China, has imposed tariffs on US$250 billion of Chinese imports to force concessions.
The Journal said that at a meeting last month, Mnuchin used the word “we” to refer to the administration’s tough-on-China trade practices.
Trump said: “What do you mean ‘we,’ Steve?” the Journal said, citing people familiar with the meeting.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)