timelets

In court on Wednesday, a Justice Department lawyer asked for Eaton to pause his order while the government appeals, but the judge denied that request.

The judge said the repayment process should be straightforward and grew impatient when a Justice Department lawyer said the government hadn’t yet formalized its position on refunding the tariffs, which President Trump imposed by citing a decades-old law. “Your position is clear,” the judge said. “The Supreme Court told you what your position is.”

The Justice Department lawyer, Claudia Burke, said that any refund process would be time-consuming for the tariff collector, CBP. The government agency would have to manually go through millions of import entries, she added.

“We live in the age of computers,” Eaton said. “It must be possible for Customs Service to program its computers so it doesn’t need a manual review."

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/judge-orders-government-to-begin-refunding-more-than-130-billion-in-tariffs-fdc1e62c.

Powered by encrypted messaging apps, anonymized platforms and a growing pool of people willing to move money for a cut, the system is agile, scalable and disturbingly hard to shut down. What began a decade ago as a fringe trend on dark-web bazaars is fast evolving into a sprawling global ecosystem of freelance money movers. Even the biggest criminal groups, long reliant on in-house laundering, are starting to tap it.

This is happening while the Trump administration is shifting funding and priorities away from money laundering investigations while also clearing the way for crypto to take a larger role in global finance. That raises the dangerous possibility that laundering operations could slip entirely beyond the government’s ability to police them, several watchdogs and crypto enforcement agents say.





https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-02-11/drug-cartel-money-laundering-shifts-to-crypto-and-the-gig-economy

Both the Trumps and Witkoffs began cashing out during the run-up to the inauguration.

On Jan. 16, two lieutenants for Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the U.A.E. president’s brother, signed the deal to purchase a 49% stake in World Liberty for half a billion dollars—a huge sum for a company that at that time had no products. Of the upfront installment, $187 million was directed to Trump family entities, while $31 million was slated to flow to entities affiliated with the Witkoff family. The deal didn’t give the Tahnoon-backed entity any rights to the proceeds of future WLFI token sales, preserving the Trumps’ and Witkoffs’ income stream.

World Liberty stopped selling its WLFI token to the public in March. By then, the company said it had taken in $550 million from the token sales, in addition to the U.A.E. investment money.



https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-sons-crypto-billions-1e7f1414

Two months after the March meeting, the administration committed to give the tiny Gulf monarchy access to around 500,000 of the most advanced AI chips a year—enough to build one of the world’s biggest AI data center clusters. The framework agreement called for roughly one-fifth of the chips to go to G42, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.

The agreement was widely viewed as a coup for the emirate’s ruling family, overcoming longstanding U.S. national security concerns and allowing the country to compete with the most powerful economies in the world at the cutting edge of AI advances. Proponents hailed the deal for unlocking a flood of investment into the U.S. and for helping entrench American technology as the global standard.

What wasn’t publicly known: Tahnoon’s emissaries had signed the deal to purchase 49% of World Liberty that January.

At the time of the investment, World Liberty had no products. It had raised $82 million by selling a token called WLFI. Aryam’s investment, though, didn’t give it the rights to future WLFI token sales, leaving the Tahnoon-backed entity out of what was then the company’s only source of revenue, the documents said.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/spy-sheikh-secret-stake-trump-crypto-tahnoon-ea4d97e8

At a news conference following Maduro’s seizure, Trump said the US administration of Venezuela would include deploying US oil companies to the country. “We’re going to have our very large United States oil companies, the biggest anywhere in the world, go in, spend billions of dollars, fix the badly broken infrastructure ... and start making money for the country,” Trump said.
...
“We built Venezuela’s oil industry with American talent, drive and skill, and the socialist regime stole it from us during those previous administrations, and they stole it through force. This constituted one of the largest thefts of American property in the history of our country,” Trump said.[earlier]

bloomberg

President Trump on Wednesday hailed the result of the latest trade talks with China as a great victory, but the best we can say is that it’s a truce that tilts in China’s direction.
...
This gets to the larger problem with Mr. Trump’s tariff strategy—that is, he doesn’t have one. His latest walk-back shows he can’t bully China as he tried to do in his first term. China has leverage of its own.

A smarter trade strategy would be to work with allies as a united front to counter China’s predatory trade practices. Instead, Mr. Trump has used tariffs as an economic scatter-gun against friends as well as foes. This increases China’s leverage, and, like this week’s trade truce, that’s nothing to cheer about.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/china-trade-talks-donald-trump-tariffs-f730f437

So that morning, when Navarro was scheduled to meet with economic adviser Kevin Hassett in a different part of the White House, Bessent and Lutnick made their move, according to multiple people familiar with the intervention.

They rushed to the Oval Office to see Trump and propose a pause on some of the tariffs—without Navarro there to argue or push back. They knew they had a tight window. The meeting with Bessent and Lutnick wasn’t on Trump’s schedule.

The two men convinced Trump of the strategy to pause some of the tariffs and to announce it immediately to calm the markets. They stayed until Trump tapped out a Truth Social post, which surprised Navarro, according to one of the people familiar with the episode. Bessent and press secretary Karoline Leavitt almost immediately went to the cameras outside the White House to make a public announcement.

“We needed everyone singing from the same song sheet,” a person familiar with the matter said.

https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/trump-tariff-pause-navarro-bessent-lutnick-b9e864fb

Trump, an avid consumer of cable news, said that he watched Dimon’s interview Wednesday morning with Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business. During the interview, Dimon said a recession was a “likely outcome” of the new tariff program, but also defended the idea of some tariffs as a way to improve trade. He urged the president to give Bessent time to make deals. “I’m taking a calm view, but it could get worse,” Dimon said.

Dimon hasn’t had a substantive conversation with Trump for years, people familiar with the matter said. While his appearance on the Fox Business show had been in place for some time, Dimon knew that Trump and his inner circle often watched Fox and that his message would likely get through to them, one of the people said.

Posted: Dec 17, 2024 7:54 AM PST | Last Updated: December 17, 2024.

Newly sworn-in Finance Minister Dominic LeBlanc, flanked by a handful of cabinet colleagues, provided more details Tuesday about how the government plans to spend $1.3 billion to secure the Canada-U.S. border and allay U.S. president-elect Donald Trump's concerns about irregular migrants and drugs.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/border-plan-leblanc-trump-1.7412456

Trump Blinks on North American Tariffs
...
Later Monday, Mr. Trump paused his tariffs against Canada as well after a phone call with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. Canada is also deploying more law enforcement to the U.S. border and will appoint a “Fentanyl Czar,” among other enforcement promises.

If the North American leaders need to cheer about a minor deal so they all claim victory, that’s better for everyone. The need is especially important for Mr. Trump given how much he has boasted that his tariffs are a fool-proof diplomatic weapon against friend or foe. Mr. Trump can’t afford to look like the guy who lost. Ms. Sheinbaum in particular seems to recognize this, and so far she’s playing her Trump cards with skill.

None of this means the tariffs are some genius power play, as the Trump media chorus is boasting. The 25% border tax could return in a month if Mr. Trump is in the wrong mood, or if he doesn’t like something the foreign leaders have said or done. It also isn’t clear what Mr. Trump really wants his tariffs to achieve. Are they about reducing the flow of fentanyl, or is his real goal to rewrite the North American trade deal he signed in his first term? If it’s the latter, there’s more political volatility ahead.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/donald-trump-tariffs-canada-mexico-claudia-sheinbaum-justin-trudeau-concessions-trade-border-d5bbed97