Trump administration taking ‘180 degree' turns on Russia-Ukraine policy
Donald Trump is considering additional sanctions on Moscow after becoming increasingly frustrated over the rising death toll in the Ukraine war.
'The White House had held up air defence missiles for Ukraine for a while; it then reversed that,' Mr Sussex told Sky News Australia.
'The short term with this particular administration can be measured in hours rather than days or weeks.'
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AU Financial Review
18 minutes ago
- AU Financial Review
ASX set to rise, US stocks edge broadly lower
Australian shares are poised to edge higher. Shares were modestly lower in New York after data on the US services sector disappointed and oil fell after a report Russia is set to propose an air truce with Ukraine. Results expected on Wednesday include AMP, News Corp, REA Group and Pinnacle Investment Management Group. The Institute for Supply Management's index of services declined last month to 50.1, below all estimates in a Bloomberg survey of economists. The employment index contracted. The group's measure of prices paid for materials and services climbed to the highest since October 2022. 'Spending on services has already slowed significantly from its solid pace last year, and the clear deterioration in the labour market and drag on real incomes from tariffs suggest a marked recovery is unlikely,' Pantheon Macroeconomics said. 'Even so, we think stagnation in the coming months is far more likely than a collapse.' President Donald Trump said that Treasury secretary Scott Bessent had withdrawn his name from consideration as a successor to Jerome Powell as chairman of the Federal Reserve. Market highlights ASX futures are pointing up 16 points or 0.2 per cent to 8744. All US prices as near 2.30pm New York time. Today's agenda Results are expected on Wednesday from AMP, News Corp, REA Group, Pinnacle Investment Management Group, BWP Trust, Centuria Industrial Reit, Charter Hall Long WALE REIT and Emerald Resources NL. The data focus is overseas on Wednesday with NZ's second-quarter employment at 8.45am AEST. TD Securities: 'Monthly filled job data imply a negative employment growth print over the quarter at -0.1 per cent. We expect the participation rate to ease again to 70.7 per cent (prior: 70.8) which on net would push the unemployment modestly higher to 5.2 per cent and in line with the RBNZ's May forecast. 'We see the RBNZ cutting by 25bps in August to 3 per cent with most data outcomes coming in line with forecasts but surveys point to near term downside risks to growth.' Top stories Blow to Chalmers' hopes for summit unity as BHP clashes with PC over tax | The nation's biggest corporate taxpayer has pushed back against the Productivity Commission's cash-flow tax proposal, undermining the treasurer's push for unity at his roundtable. Nine's publishing to out-earn free-to-air television in two years | The newspapers division will be the most valuable part of the business after it sells Domain to US property giant CoStar, analysts say. | Automating tasks could deliver a 4.3 per cent increase in labour productivity growth, the Productivity Commission says, but it won't be easy for humans. | The rising cost of building transmission is prompting questions over whether a comprehensive grid build-out is the best energy transition option for consumers.
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Bill and Hillary Clinton among figures subpoenaed in US congressional Epstein probe
A committee in the United States House of Representatives has issued subpoenas seeking depositions from former US president Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in relation to the Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking investigation. The House Oversight Committee, which is controlled by Republicans, also issued subpoenas for Justice Department files and depositions from eight law enforcement officials in relation to the case. The requests were made as part of a congressional probe that some US politicians believe may show links between the deceased financier and current US President Donald Trump. The subpoenas were issued even while the US House of Representatives was on a month-long summer break, with interest in the Epstein files running high. Mr Trump has denied prior knowledge of Epstein's crimes and claimed he cut off their relationship long ago, and he has repeatedly tried to move past the Justice Department's decision not to release a full accounting of the investigation. The department also said Epstein had no secret "client list" — rebuffing conspiracy theories held by Mr Trump's far-right supporters about supposedly high-level Democratic complicity. But politicians from both major political parties, as well as many in the Republican president's political base, have refused to let it go. Representative James Comer, the Republican chairperson of the oversight committee, noted in letters to Attorney General Pam Bondi and the former officials that the cases of Epstein and his former girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell "have received immense public interest and scrutiny." "While the Department undertakes efforts to uncover and publicly disclose additional information related to Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell's cases, it is imperative that Congress conduct oversight of the federal government's enforcement of sex trafficking laws generally and specifically its handling of the investigation and prosecution of Mr. Epstein and Ms. Maxwell," Mr Comer said. Since Epstein's 2019 death in a New York jail cell as he awaited trial for sex trafficking charges, conservative conspiracists have stoked theories about what information investigators gathered on Epstein — and who else knew about his sexual abuse of teenage girls. Republican politicians on the House Oversight Committee nodded to that line of questioning last month by initiating the subpoenas for the Clintons, both Democrats, as well as demanding all communications between President Joe Biden's Democratic administration and the Justice Department regarding Epstein. Former president Mr Clinton was among a number of luminaries acquainted with Epstein, a wealthy financier, before the criminal investigation against him in Florida became public two decades ago. Mr Clinton has never been accused of wrongdoing by any of the women who say Epstein abused them. One of Epstein's victims, Virginia Giuffre, once gave a newspaper interview in which she described riding in a helicopter with Mr Clinton and flirting with Mr Trump, but she later said in a deposition that those things had not actually happened and were mistakes by the reporter. Mr Clinton has previously said through a spokesperson that while he travelled on Epstein's jet he never visited his homes and had no knowledge of his crimes. The committee is also demanding interviews under oath from former attorneys general spanning the last four presidential administrations: Merrick Garland, William Barr, Jeff Sessions, Loretta Lynch, Eric Holder and Alberto Gonzales. The committee also subpoenaed former FBI Directors James Comey and Robert Mueller. However, it was Democrats who sparked the move to subpoena the Justice Department for its files on Epstein. They were joined by some Republicans last month to successfully initiate the subpoena through a subcommittee of the House Oversight Committee. "Today was an important step forward in our fight for transparency regarding the Epstein files and our dedication to seeking justice for the victims," said Democratic politicians Robert Garcia and Summer Lee said in a joint statement. "Now, we must continue putting pressure on the Department of Justice until we actually receive every document." The subpoenas give the Justice Department until August 19 to hand over the requested records, though such requests are typically open to negotiation and can be resisted by the Trump administration. The committee is also asking the former officials to appear for the depositions throughout August, September and October, concluding with Hillary Clinton on October 9 and Bill Clinton on October 14. AP
ABC News
an hour ago
- ABC News
Donald Trump is leading an overt attack on the institutions underpinning the US economy
When figures were announced last Friday showing lower-than-expected growth in the United States labour force, a chill went through international markets and the global community of economists and policymakers. There were just 73,000 extra jobs created in July (when 100,000-plus had been expected), while the monthly data set also included huge downward revisions to figures for May and June. The weak numbers reflected a fall in both government and private sector jobs, but economists also noted that the foreign-born labour force had declined by over one million people since Donald Trump came to office. The numbers did not sit comfortably with the president's claims that a US economic renaissance was underway in his second term. They were instead a bleak reminder that, at some point, there are likely to be economic consequences flowing from the world of disruption he has unleashed on the US and global economies. The relative strength of the US economy to date — apparently defying the price and activity shocks that had been predicted to flow from his erratic tariff announcements — has insulated the Trump administration politically from quite a lot of domestic unease. But that could all change if the early signs of a slowdown we are now seeing start to accelerate. Economic growth statistics released just before the labour force figures had already suggested that slowing consumption was driving the economy to lose momentum. Ironically, perhaps, the weak numbers added to the president's strident attacks on the US Federal Reserve, which he demands must cut interest rates. But President Trump did not see it that way and shocked markets and observers by immediately announcing he was sacking the woman responsible for producing the job numbers. His move to fire the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), Erika McEntarfer, was unprecedented and has raised questions about whether economic data upon which financial markets rely will now be subject to politicisation and thus be rendered non-credible. "Last weeks Job's Report was RIGGED, just like the numbers prior to the Presidential Election were Rigged. That's why, in both cases, there was massive, record setting revisions, in favor of the Radical Left Democrats," Trump posted on Truth Social, claiming McEntarfer had manipulated the key economic data without offering any evidence. The numbers, he said, were ridiculous. "She will be replaced with someone much more competent and qualified. Important numbers like this must be fair and accurate, they can't be manipulated for political purposes," Trump said, claiming without evidence that she had massaged figures to help former president Biden, who had appointed her. Markets did not react well to the move. The Financial Times reported that David Wilcox, the former head of the Federal Economic Statistics Advisory Committee, which was disbanded by the Trump administration earlier this year, said firing the BLS commissioner would be "a serious blow to the integrity of the US statistical system". It would raise questions among those who use the economic data about "whether the objective was to please the president or present the best possible picture of what's going on in the US economy", he told the FT. A group headed up by the two previous heads of the agency, Friends of BLS, echoed that concern, noting to the FT that, "when leaders of other nations have politicised economic data and destroyed public trust in their data infrastructure, the consequences have been dire". In conjunction with Trump's relentless attacks on the US Federal Reserve, and particularly its chair, Jerome Powell, the BLS sacking is seen as another brazen attack on the institutional underpinnings of the American economy. In the first Trump term — a term that Donald Trump and his team had not really expected to win — many of the erosions in the superstructure of state came about more by neglect than deliberate design. The writer Michael Lewis documented some alarming incidents of this in his book The Fifth Risk. Lewis reported how the first Trump administration didn't appoint people to crucial jobs, including management of the US nuclear arsenal and nuclear waste in the Department of Energy, leaving them empty for years. Or, it sought to appoint allies with commercial interests in a particular field to crucial jobs such as those heading the equivalent of the Bureau of Meteorology, where there had been attempts made to charge people for weather forecasts, including for tornadoes. But the push to dismantle and discredit government institutions in the second Trump presidency is much more overt. The president said this week he would appoint a new head of the BLS in the coming days, just as he would appoint a new member of the US Federal Reserve after one governor shocked markets by unexpectedly resigning early on the weekend. Just as happened with the Supreme Court in the legal sphere, the president now has the opportunity to shape — and possibly distort — America's economic institutions.
