Good morning. Donald Trump hardens tariff threats on copper and drugs.Meta buys a stake in the world’s largest eye-wear maker. And a crypto firm’s secret Swiss vault holds an $8 billion pile of gold. Listen to the day’s top stories.
President Trump sowed chaos in metals markets with threats of a higher-than-expected 50% tariff on copper imports. He also said drug companies may face a levy as high as 200% on imports if they didn’t move production to the US.
More tariffs: Trump flagged the release of trade updates on at least seven countries today. Meanwhile, the EU is said to be closing in on a deal with the US that would exempt commercial aircraft from some levies and create carve outs for some German carmakers. Asian shares dipped while European equity contracts were higher as investors gauged the impact of escalating trade tensions.
Trump said Jerome Powell should “resign immediately” if he misled lawmakers and accused the Federal Reserve chair of “whining like a baby about non-existent inflation.” Separately, the president said he’s weighing taking control of Washington, DC to combat crime.
The UK should stop looking down on companies seeking a secondary listing in London if it wants to rebuild the stock exchange’s waning status, the leader of a corporate lobby group said.
A Vkusno i Tochka restaurant in Moscow in 2023. Photographer: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP
The image of two beef patties on a sesame-seed bun with lettuce and cheese looks oddly familiar, and so does the stylized golden M on the carton of French fries. But this isn’t a McDonald’s, it’s an outlet of Vkusno i Tochka.
The Russian copycat filled the void after McDonald’s sold its restaurants to a local franchisee. The move was part of an exodus of hundreds of global brands—from Adidas to Zara—after sanctions were imposed following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
Vkusno i Tochka’s version of the Big Mac is called the Big Hit and a Quarter Pounder is a Big Special. Alongside the mimicry, subtle differences have crept onto the menu. The combination ofwestern classics and local expertise is a sign of how Russian knock-offs have been digging in.
Stars Coffee’s logo uses similar colors and styling as Starbucks’ but the figure wears a Kokoshnik—a traditional Russian headdress—instead of a crown.
BRICS members are divided on tariffs, but they’re not all anti-American, Mihir Sharma writes. If there’s one thing that almost all of them have in common, it’s that they want to ensure their most powerful member—China—doesn’t dominate.
Secret stockpile. Tether’s Swiss vault contains about $8 billion of gold, or almost 80 tons of the metal, making the stablecoin issuer one of the largest holders of gold outside of banks and nation states.
