With Europe finally realizing – very belatedly, as usual – that Trump was right all along in his crusade to hammer Beijing’s relentless dumping of exports to flood foreign markets with its below-cost wares as China no longer has nearly the required demand for goods and services and so has to crush and dominate foreign markets by selling at far below market prices, overnight we learned that China’s trade surplus in goods surpassed $1 trillion for the first time, highlighting the ongoing boom in the country’s exports despite US President Donald Trump’s tariff war.

Exports rose 5.9% in November on a year earlier, reversing October’s rare decline, while imports rose by 1.9% according to data released by China’s customs administration, which covers goods but not services. 

The November surplus came in at $112 billion, the third-largest ever accumulated by China in a single month and far more than forecast by economists.

For the first 11 months of the year, China’s exports increased 5.4% from the year-earlier period to $3.4 trillion, while the country’s imports declined 0.6% over that same stretch to $2.3 trillion. That brought the country’s trade surplus this year to $1.08 trillion, China’s General Administration of Customs said Monday. The equivalent figure for the full year last year was just shy of $1 trillion. The record surplus comes in the wake of a de-escalation in trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, which agreed a year-long truce in October.

That remarkable surplus, never before seen in recorded economic history, is the culmination of decades of industrial policies and human industriousness that helped China emerge from a poor agrarian economy in the late 1970s to become the world’s second-largest economy.

What is remarkable is that China navigated the trade war and growing economic protectionism around the world, and needed just 11 months to catapult it past the full-year record set in 2024. While shipments to the US plummeted 29% in November…

…. the eighth month of double-digit declines and the biggest since August, strong growth in sales to regions like the European Union and Africa more than offset the slump. 

Lynn Song, chief Greater China economist at ING Bank NV, said the rebounds in shipments to the EU and Japan were “perhaps a little surprising.”

“The November export data came in a little stronger than expected, despite a further deceleration of exports to the US,” Song said.

Shipments overseas – in many cases to regions such as Vietnam which then transship to the US – have boomed for much of this year, in spite of Trump’s launch of a trade war early in 2025. The world’s second-biggest economy has emerged largely unscathed from the standoff, as it delivered more goods to markets other than the US, which have then proceeded to ship Chinese imports onward to the US.

The display of export dominance is stirring waves of resentment abroad, especially among countries which are forced to shutter domestic industries as they fail to compete with much cheaper Chinese imports.

China’s industrial heft has long been well-known to its trading partners, becoming a central point of contention in its relations with the world. Last year, its trade surplus rose to a record $993 billion. Topping the $1 trillion milestone throws the magnitude of China’s export dominance into even starker relief and is likely to draw more attention to the growing imbalances.

“It is so big that it’s obvious that it’s not just the United States or Europe but the whole world that will have to fund that gap,” Jens Eskelund, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in China, told the WSJ.

On Sunday, French President Emmanuel Macron, who just returned home after an otherwise cordial three-day summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing and Chengdu, warned that the EU may take “strong measures” including by imposing tariffs, should Beijing fail to address the imbalance.

“I told them that if they didn’t react, we Europeans would be forced, in the very near future, to take strong measures and withdraw from cooperation, like the United States, such as imposing tariffs on Chinese products,” Macron said in an interview with French daily Les Echos.

“China is hitting the heart of the European industrial and innovation model,” he said. French officials have been particularly upset about the Chinese yuan, which has fallen by around 10% against the euro this year.

During a joint appearance with Xi in Beijing last Thursday, Macron said that these trade “imbalances are becoming unbearable.”

It was a remark that reflected sharpening French demands on Beijing to spur consumption and curb exports, and one Macron repeated to rapt Sichuan students and at a gathering with French and Chinese business leaders during his fourth trip to the country as president.

ING’s Song added that if “the EU indeed does follow suit with tariffs, it would represent a significant risk to the external demand outlook for China.”

France’s goods trade deficit with China has doubled in the past decade to €47bn in 2024. French investment in China over the same period is nearly quadruple China’s into France.

Paris is demanding Beijing recalibrate its trade and investment relationship with the EU, according to the FT.

“We are at the last stop before a crisis,” a French official warned. “If we don’t change course, we will worsen global fragmentation,” they added, suggesting Paris would have to consider “protective measures”. 

Macron, who was accompanied on his trip by about 40 French business leaders, called for China to transfer technology to France in areas such as clean tech and batteries — a stark reminder of the shifting balance of power in crucial industrial sectors. The French president also defended EU trade investigations into Chinese electric vehicles, saying the bloc was taking a company-by-company approach. 

“We need more tech neutrality and a European preference” for domestic industries such as automobiles, Macron said in Chengdu, capital of China’s south-western Sichuan province.

“This is not at all aggressive or protectionist. The Americans and other players in the North American market do it, the Chinese do it,” the president said. “The major risk for Europeans is accelerated deindustrialisation.”

But it’s not just France, says Eskelund of the European chamber, who points to a raft of bilateral trade complaints and actions leveled against China in recent months, including from not just the U.S. and its Western allies, but also from countries in Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Middle East.

“I have no doubt that we’ll see more, not less, in terms of all of these trade defense initiatives all over the world,” he said.

Eskelund says that China’s trade imbalance with the world is even more pronounced than the $1 trillion figure suggests, given the relative weakness of the Chinese yuan.

When calculated by value, China accounts for roughly 15% of global goods exports. But in volume terms, Eskelund estimates that every shipping container being sent from Europe to China is outnumbered by the four containers heading in the other direction. In volume terms, he estimates that China accounts for some 37% of everything being exported in shipping containers.

“Concern is growing,” he said, warning that, in the near future, we may “get to a point where things snap.”

The EU is considering setting “made in Europe” targets of up to 70% for certain products such as cars as it pushes to prioritise domestic goods and cut reliance on China. Brussels is also planning to tighten foreign investment rules to ensure Chinese companies do not gain advantage from the bloc’s open market without generating benefits for local workers and sharing technology.

For its part, China continues to make promises and deliver nothing. China’s commerce ministry on Friday repeated promises to eliminate restrictive measures in the domestic market and to spur consumption. But experts told the FT that Beijing has little intention of drastically altering its economic model. As a result, trade tensions between China and the bloc have sparked anti-dumping investigations in both directions.

The EU dairy sector is awaiting a ruling on a probe Beijing launched last year in retaliation against Brussels’ imposition of additional levies on Chinese EV imports. China could impose tariffs of as much as 40 per cent on dairy products on top of existing duties. 

As Bloomberg notes, the trillion dollar milestone reached by China follows the recent de-escalation of tensions with the Trump administration. The huge surplus also underscores how Beijing is “struggling” to rebalance (as in it hasn’t even bothered to start) the economy away from its dependence on demand abroad, with net exports accounting for almost a third of economic growth this year.

“It does look like China’s export competitiveness is still standing firm against US tariffs,” said Michelle Lam, Greater China economist at Societe Generale, referring to robust shipments to other markets than America. Rising trade tensions with the EU are “a source of downside risk to watch out for,” she said.

After Macron failed to make any impression on Xi’s export aspirations, on Monday, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul arrived in China for a two-day trip, becoming the latest senior European official to visit for talks. China’s exports to the EU expanded almost 15% last month – the fastest since July 2022 – with sales to France, Germany and Italy all seeing double-digit growth as Chinese exporters grab market shares from domestic producers. Meanwhile, European domestic industries are being snuffed out in one brutal, manufacturing depression as they fail to compete with Chinese substitutes. 

Wadephul said before the trip that he’d raise trade curbs, especially on rare earths, and “overcapacities” in electric vehicles and steel with his Chinese counterparts. China’s auto imports are down almost 39% in the year to date.

Shipments overseas have boomed for much of this year, in spite of Trump’s launch of a trade war early in 2025. The world’s second-biggest economy has emerged largely unscathed from the standoff, as it delivered more goods to markets other than the US.

The year-on-year increase in exports of electronic and machinery products rebounded to almost 10% last month, versus October’s rise of just over 1%, according to Bloomberg calculations based on China’s customs data. Declines in shipments of consumer goods narrowed. 

Exports to Africa surged nearly 28% in November, while those to the Southeast Asian trading bloc gained only 8.4%, the least since February. Despite escalating tensions over the self-governing island of Taiwan, imports from Japan rose faster in November than exports to there, resulting in a $1.3 billion deficit for China.

The historic trade surplus will help boost growth in China’s GDP after months of deterioration in the economy. Retail sales are coming off their longest stretch of slowdowns since 2021 while investment just shrank by a record amount. Although the Chinese economy is expanding at a slower pace in the last quarter of the year, its strong performance earlier in 2025 means the official growth target of around 5% is likely within reach.

As Bloomberg notes, foreign demand has been the one consistent driver of Chinese growth, helping compensate for lackluster private consumption at home and the prolonged slump in the housing market. But the trade picture has become increasingly unbalanced, with China’s weak demand and increasingly innovative firms slashing demand for imports.

While it’s “ultimately essential” for China to embrace a growth model driven more by domestic demand, such a pivot will take time, according to ING’s Song. In reality it will likely take years, and by then Europe’s domestic production will be decimated. 

“We need to see what sort of concrete measures are put into place to boost domestic consumption, and how those measures to increase win-win cooperation and establish international consumption centers play out,” he said. “It’s quite clear at this point that relying on external demand as the main growth engine is a risky bet.”

Authored by Sam Dorman via The Epoch Times,

The Supreme Court seemed inclined to remove certain limits on President Donald Trump’s power to remove bureaucrats, but oral arguments on Dec. 8 left questions about how far their eventual decision would go in empowering the executive.

The case – Trump v. Slaughter – focused on President Donald Trump’s request to override a legislative barrier to firing members of the Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

Trump attempted to fire Rebecca Slaughter, an FTC commissioner, earlier this year without invoking any of the reasons Congress listed in the FTC Act as valid for removing commissioners such as her.

Slaughter then won multiple court battles in an attempt to stave off that termination.

The Dec. 8 arguments, which lasted more than two hours, could serve as a prelude to much larger changes to the nation’s separation of powers.

Besides Slaughter, other officials could be impacted if the Supreme Court takes up Trump’s invitation to overrule a 90-year precedent called Humphrey’s Executor v. United States.

In that case, a unanimous court said that if agencies exercise “quasi-legislative” or “quasi-judicial” power, their officials may receive extra protection from Congress.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer opened arguments by telling the court that it should overrule that decision.

Slaughter’s attorney, Amit Agarwal, accused Sauer of suggesting that the federal government has been wrong for decades in creating and blessing independent agencies like the FTC in prior decades.

While some of the justices seemed skeptical of limits that Slaughter attempted to impose on Trump’s executive authority, many of them indicated concern about overruling such a longstanding precedent.

An eventual decision might overrule Humphrey’s Executor or be more limited to Trump’s removal of Slaughter and officials in similar agencies.

Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that a prior case, Seila Law v. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, had hollowed out the decision in Humphrey’s Executor and indicated that Agarwal should switch to using a different precedent to support his case.

“The one thing Seila Law made pretty clear, I think, is that Humphrey’s Executor is just a dried husk of whatever people used to think it was,” Roberts said.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor told Sauer that he was asking the court to “destroy” the structure of the federal government.

Repeatedly, she pressed him on when the court had overturned such a longstanding and significant precedent.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh similarly asked why no presidents had challenged Humphrey’s view of executive authority for 90 years.

Some of his questioning, however, indicated that he thought predictions of impending chaos were overblown.

Instead, he suggested, ruling in Trump’s favor would entail altering how commissioners are removed rather than invalidating the FTC as a whole.

🚨 BREAKING: Justice Brett Kavanaugh intellectually PUMMELS DEI Justice Ketanji Jackson at the Supreme Court on whether President Trump can fire a Democrat member of the FTC 🔥

JACKSON: I don’t understand why the president gets to control everything and outweigh Congress’… https://t.co/KJpFKPR8iR pic.twitter.com/rf7uI3YXst

— Eric Daugherty (@EricLDaugh) December 8, 2025

Kavanaugh also asked Agarwal to address concerns about members of multi-member agencies being insulated from democratic accountability.

Sauer similarly argued “the sky will not fall” if the court limits Congress’s authority.

He pointed to how the court ruled against the protections Congress imposed for the director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in Seila Law.

How the court views Seila Law, decided in 2020, and others could determine how they handle Slaughter’s firing and the president’s removal power more generally.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett told Sauer the court had seen an “eroding of Humphrey’s Executor over the years,” but also indicated concern about how overruling that precedent would impact the structure of government.

Separation of Powers

During oral argument, Roberts seemed sympathetic to the administration’s argument that the modern FTC was very different than the one before the court in Humphrey’s Executor.

In his majority opinion for Seila Law, Roberts had stated in a footnote that the Supreme Court’s “conclusion that the FTC did not exercise executive power has not withstood the test of time.”

Justice Elena Kagan suggested that Sauer was advocating a view of executive power that lacked reasonable limits.

“Once you’re down this road, it’s a little bit hard to see how you stop,” she said, later noting that multiple agencies and lower-level employees could face easier removal.

Many of the justices’ questions wrestled with how best to balance power between Congress and the president. Given the complexity of assessing each agency’s functions, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested it would be better if Congress were in charge of deciding whether certain positions deserved to have some protection from presidential removal.

By contrast, Justice Clarence Thomas pressed Agarwal on how far Congress could go in limiting presidents’ ability to remove individuals such as heads of the departments of Homeland Security and Commerce.

Justice Neil Gorsuch seemed sympathetic to Sauer’s position. He suggested that the court should go so far as to clarify that Congress cannot delegate its legislative power to the executive branch.

“Is the water warm?” Gorsuch asked.

Separate from whether to overrule Humphrey’s, the court is also considering whether it should rule that judges cannot order the reinstatement of officers removed by the president.

Whatever its decision, the court’s opinion will likely have far-reaching consequences. Multiple legal battles have played out over Trump’s firings of other high-level officials. While the court has offered tentative rulings in those cases, the decision in Slaughter’s case is expected to provide final conclusions of law on this issue.

It’s unclear how this case will impact Trump’s attempt to fire Federal Reserve member Lisa Cook. During oral argument, Sauer indicated her agency may enjoy greater protection and cited recent language the Supreme Court has used in distinguishing the Federal Reserve from other entities.

Alina Habba, the former personal attorney to President Trump, is stepping down from her contested position atop the federal prosecuting office in New Jersey.

“As a result of the Third Circuit’s ruling, and to protect the stability and integrity of the office which I love, I have decided to step down in my role,” she said in a statement posted on X on Monday.

Habba’s resignation came after district and appellate court rulings which found she was unlawfully serving in the role, a powerful post charged with enforcing federal criminal and civil law.

The Trump administration had been attempting to keep Habba in place after her interim appointment expired and she had not received US Senate confirmation.

Habba’s statement Monday said “do not mistake compliance for surrender”.

pic.twitter.com/wIhEvXXZoh

— Alina Habba (@AlinaHabba) December 8, 2025

“Make no mistake, you can take the girl out of New Jersey, but you cannot take New Jersey out of the girl,” Habba’s statement said.

Attorney General Pam Bondi said that Habba would remain at the Department of Justice as senior advisor to the attorney general for U.S. Attorneys.

“I am saddened to accept Alina’s resignation,” Bondi said, calling the appellate court’s decision “flawed”.

pic.twitter.com/bid0ao1y4B

— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) December 8, 2025

Bondi credited Habba with helping to reduce crime in Camden and Newark, New Jersey, and said the DOJ would continue “to review” the appeals court ruling.

Authored by Jack Phillips via The Epoch Times,

White House border czar Tom Homan on Dec. 7 said more than 60,000 children who were illegally smuggled into the United States have been located by the Trump administration and that some were rescued from dire situations, including sex trafficking and forced labor.

In an interview with the Fox News show “Fox & Friends” on Dec. 7, Homan said that the previous administration “lost track of 300,000” children who were “smuggled into” the United States, saying some of those children were released to ”unvetted sponsors.”

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, 62,000 children who were taken into the United States had been found as of Dec. 5, he said.

Homan said that “many of them are in sex trafficking,” “are in forced labor,” or are being abused.

He also said, “[I] can’t discuss some of the mistreatment we found out about.”

Homan said that Trump committed to doing everything possible “to find every one of these children.” He did not provide more details about the rescued children but said that the administration “saved over 62,000 children’s lives.”

A statement released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) on Dec. 5 stated that the number of border encounters is continuing to decline; 30,367 total encounters were reported to the agency nationwide in November. That’s down slightly from the 30,573 encounters nationwide in October, it said.

Border Patrol also said that it has released “zero illegal aliens” into the country for seven consecutive months.

In December 2024, the final month of President Joe Biden’s administration, there were more than 301,981 encounters at the southwest border sector by Border Patrol agents, according to data from the agency. There were about 11,600 such encounters in September 2025, the most recent month for which data are available.

“Our focus is unwavering: secure the border, enforce the law, and protect this nation,” CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott said in the Dec. 5 statement. “These numbers reflect the tireless efforts of our agents and officers who are delivering results that redefine border security. We’re not slowing down. We’re setting the pace for the future.”

The Border Patrol efforts and the mass deportation of illegal immigrants are in line with campaign promises made by Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign. And since taking office, he has signed multiple executive orders and memorandums, including declaring an emergency at the U.S.–Mexico border, designating several criminal gangs as terrorist organizations, and launching federal operations targeting illegal immigrants in Chicago, Los Angeles, and other cities.

The Supreme Court agreed on Dec. 5 to hear a case challenging the legality of an executive order issued by Trump that sought to end birthright citizenship. Multiple lower courts have ruled against the January order, which would bar children born in the United States to parents who are in the country illegally from automatically becoming citizens.

Democrats have been broadly critical of the Trump administration’s immigration policies. A House lawmaker introduced a bill in May that would prohibit the use of federal funds to enforce any order barring birthright citizenship. At the state level, multiple governors and mayors have also been opposed the federal deportation operations.

Meanwhile, in the past week, the Trump administration paused all immigration applications, including applications for green cards, for people from 19 countries that are also subject to a travel ban imposed earlier this year, as part of sweeping immigration changes in the wake of the shooting of two National Guard troops.

A policy memo issued on the website of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the agency tasked with processing and approving all requests for immigration benefits, said the policy applies to citizens of Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, the Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Yemen, Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.

The Epoch Times contacted the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees border- and immigration-related matters, for additional comment but did not hear back by publication time.

It’s funny how no one actually seems to care about climate change malarky when there isn’t an environmentalist Democrat in the White House to try and impress…

Along that vein, India is weighing a major expansion of coal power that could extend new plant construction until at least 2047, according to people familiar with ongoing discussions between the power ministry and the government policy think tank NITI Aayog. The move would represent a sharp departure from earlier projections that expected additions to peak around 2035, Bloomberg reported this week.

The talks align with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s push to make the country energy independent and reclassify it as a developed nation by its 100th year of independence. With domestic reserves expected to last a century, officials see coal as the most reliable option to support that goal. Total capacity could reach 420 gigawatts by 2047 — roughly an 87% increase from today, the people said.

Bloomberg writes that the people added that the government still plans to expand renewable energy and battery storage, but warns that solar and battery supply chains remain vulnerable, especially because “China…dominates much of the supply chain for batteries and solar panels.” Some of the planned coal units would be geared toward balancing intermittent renewable generation, with the ministry offering incentives for plants that operate more flexibly.

Such a move risks complicating India’s climate commitments. NITI Aayog projections indicate that emissions must peak by 2045 to meet Modi’s target of becoming net zero by 2070. India, the world’s third-largest emitter, has yet to submit updated emissions-reduction strategies for 2035 under the Paris Agreement, arguing that richer nations should shoulder a bigger share of decarbonization to allow developing economies to grow.

Authored by James Rickards via Investors Daily,

Events are moving quickly in the gold market. You know about the run-up in the price of gold; it has become a mainstream media story. But the gold situation is bigger than that. There are important developments almost daily that will sustain the gold bull market for years to come. Let’s look briefly at the gold price action and then turn to these breaking developments.

Gold is in its third great bull market. There really were no bull or bear markets from 1870 to 1971 because the world was on a gold standard at a fixed price. The global gold standard had flaws. Some countries joined earlier than others. The U.S. did not formally adhere to a gold standard until 1900, but the UK and the London gold market maintained a steady price from 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars until 1914 after which the U.S. maintained a world price.

There were breaks in the system in 1931-1934 when the UK and U.S. devalued their currencies against gold, but a new fixed priced was established. A true floating rate market in gold did not emerge until Richard Nixon closed the gold window in 1971.

The first bull market (1971 – 1980) saw gold soar 2,200% in eight years. The second bull market (1991 – 2011) witnessed a gold price rally of 670% in twelve years.

The third bull market (which we are in today) can be more difficult to date. If one begins at the interim low of $1,050 per ounce in December 2015 until today’s price of $4,220 per ounce, then the gain is 300% over ten years, which is less than the two prior bull markets. Of course, this bull market is far from over and material gains in the near future should be expected.

However, gold moved in a range of $1,000 per ounce to $2,000 per ounce during almost all of the 2015 – 2025 period until July 1, 2023, when a breakout above $2,000 per ounce began. If we date the bull market from that point, we see a rally of 110% in just over two years.

10k Per Ounce or Higher

If we take the average gain for the first and second bull markets, which is over 1,400%, and take an average duration of ten years and apply those metrics to a baseline of $2,000 per ounce in 2023, that suggests gold will reach $28,000 per ounce by 2033. Of course, this method is arbitrary. Gains could be much larger and come much faster. A replay of the 1971 – 1980 scenario would put gold close to $100,000 per ounce by 2032.

• From $1,000 to $2,000 = 100% gain

• From $2,000 to $3,000 = 50% gain

• From $3,000 to $4,000 = 33% gain

• From $4,000 to $5,000 = 25% gain

• From $9,000 to $10,000 = 11% gain

With this as background, it’s entirely reasonable to suggest gold could reach $10,000 per ounce by late 2026 on its way much higher. What few investors may realize is that each $1,000 increase in the price of gold is easier than the one before. The price gain is the same at each milestone, but the percentage increase is smaller because each increase is working from a higher base. Going from $4,000 to $5,000 per ounce is a 25% gain. But going from $9,000 to $10,000 per ounce is only an 11% gain. This is why the push to $10,000 per ounce will go slowly at first and then quickly.

Underreported Events to Consider

That much is widely known.

What is less well known is series of underreported events that will turbocharge the price gains ahead.

Here is a summary of those events:

1. Central banks remain net buyers of gold as they have been since 2010. This puts an informal floor under the price of gold while still allowing unlimited upside.

2. Mining output has been flat for last six years. This does not mean “peak gold”, but it shows that gold is getting harder to find and more expensive to mine. Supply constraints + expanding demand = higher prices.

3. The copper-to-gold price ratio is at an all-time low. This speaks to the relative role of industrial metals versus precious metals. The gold price can rise in recessionary scenarios and depressions. Gains are not limited to periods of inflation and hot economies.

4. Russia has demonstrated that it can survive Western dollar-based financial sanctions by holding over 25% of its reserves in physical gold. That’s a lesson the world and especially the BRICS are internalizing.

5. Digitally tokenized gold has become a huge new source of demand. Tether is leading the way with its XAUt token that has a current market cap (tied to the price of gold) of $2.2 trillion. The gold held in vaults to support the token now exceeds 16.2 metric tonnes, more than some countries. This gold is not traded, and the token is only redeemable for cash, not physical gold. This means Tether is the ultimate buy-and-hold gold investor and their gold is effectively off the market.

6. Italy has recently taken steps to asset that Italian gold (2,452 metric tonnes; the third largest gold reserve in the world after the U.S. and Germany) belongs to the Italian people and not to the Bank of Italy. That dispute has cooled down, but its mere existence shows that a global struggle for possession of physical gold is underway.

7. Television and media personality Tucker Carlson has launched an online gold dealing operation. That’s only one among many online dealers, but it shows that gold ownership is reaching a wider audience and we are getting closer to the retail frenzy stage of price appreciation.

8. The U.S. Treasury is giving serious consideration to revaluing its gold reserves by causing the Federal Reserve to restate the value of its gold certificate given when the Treasury took the Fed’s gold in 1934. The current value of the certificate is $42.22 per ounce. If revalued to $4,200 per ounce, this would not change the world price of gold (it’s just an accounting entry), but it would add about $1 trillion to the Treasury’s account at the Fed and it would show that the U.S. respects gold as a legitimate monetary asset.

Other material developments in the gold markets are occurring almost daily. We expect this to continue. If you have not invested in gold yet or if your allocation is small, it’s not too late to invest. The biggest gains are still ahead and will happen sooner than later.

By Benjamin Pictor, senior market strategst at Rabobank

US equity indices closed in on new highs on Friday as traders look ahead to this week’s FOMC meeting and place bets that monetary conditions are poised to get a little easier. Nevertheless, the US sovereign curve shifted higher by almost 4 basis points, with around half of that move coming after the release of September PCE inflation figures.

The September PCE result was broadly in-line with the expectations of surveyed economists. The headline measure rose 0.3% MoM while the core figure rose 0.2%. That resulted in 2.8% YoY growth for both series. Real personal spending data missed expectations of a 0.1% lift to be flat for the month, supporting the case of the doves leading into this week’s FOMC meeting. A 0.4% lift in August was also revised down to 0.2%, while personal incomes slightly outperformed expectations.

The concurrently-released University of Michigan consumer sentiment index showed overall sentiment rising from 51.0 to 53.3 and a moderating in both short and long-term inflation expectations (even amongst Democrats!). Current conditions fell slightly, while the expectations sub-index surged to 55.0 as respondents’ views of their personal finances seemingly reiterated the signal from the September personal income figures but still remained below levels recorded early in the year. Labor market sentiment improved slightly but remained pessimistic overall to underscore the sense that employment conditions in the USA have been trending worse. The latest JOLTS report to be released on Tuesday will provide further signal on that score.

Friday also saw the release of labor market figures for Canada, which surprised handily to the upside. Net employment grew by 53,600 positions and the unemployment rate unexpectedly fell from 6.9% to 6.5%, having been helped along by a falling participation rate. To put the fall in context, the median expectation of surveyed economists was for unemployment to rise to 7.0%. Consequently, Canadian OIS has followed the Aussie market from implying a small probability of further monetary easing in 2026 to suddenly having a rate by the end of the year fully-priced. Understandably, USDCAD fell by more than a big figure on the day before finding support at 1.3820.

This week will give us a better clue as to what the RBA thinks of the rapid reprice that has occurred in Aussie interest rates over the last month and a bit. The RBA will makes its final policy rate determination for the year on Tuesday, and is widely expected to leave the cash rate unchanged at 3.60%, having cut it three times earlier this year. With growth and inflation resurgent recently, and the labor market still tight by historical standards (albeit trending weaker), market expectations have shifted from having another cut in the first half of 2026 fully priced as recently as the start of November to now having a hike by the end of 2026 fully priced.

This week’s FOMC meeting and the accompanying release of an updated dot-plot will undoubtedly occupy the bulk of traders’ attention (see our preview here), but the recently released US National Security Strategy deserves staking out the ground that economics and finance is likely to be operating within over the years ahead. We will include a deeper-dive into the strategy and its implications tomorrow, but the broad headlines are US prioritization of the Western Hemisphere through a ‘Trump-corollary’ to the Monroe Doctrine, reindustrialization and energy dominance as elements of national security, maintenance of military dominance and the integrity of the First Island Chain (vis-à-vis China), and – uncomfortably for Europe – support for nationalism over supra-national structures that the US says are subverting democracy and contributing to a lack of civilizational self-confidence.

Tellingly, the document calls for international cooperation on addressing large trade imbalances that have been created by China’s investment-led economy – particularly China’s reliance on external demand to soak up its large exportable surplus of goods, thereby displacing demand for locally-produced goods in other parts of the world (see today’s WSJ for more on that). Explicitly, the document says “America First diplomacy seeks to rebalance global trade relationships. We have made clear to our allies that America’s current account deficit is unsustainable. We must encourage Europe, Japan, Korea, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and other prominent nations in adopting trade policies that help rebalance China’s economy toward household consumption…” For those playing along at home, that means the USA wants you to tariff China.

Of course, some are already doing this. We have seen a number of trade barriers erected between Canada and China, Europe and China, and Mexico and China in recent months. The clear trend is toward more of this as Emmanuel Macron over the weekend told Les Echos that “I told them [China] that if they don’t react [to reduce trade imbalances], we Europeans will be forced to take strong measures… such as tariffs on Chinese products.” Macron contextualised the need for these measures by articulating the existential challenge that European industry faces from competition with China: “China wants to pierce the heart of European industrial and innovation model, which has been historically based on machine tools and the automobile.”

While the US National Security Strategy may make for uncomfortable reading, to a certain extent it is simply a more forthright articulation of problems that many Europeans have already sensed. Clearly, the United States now has a low tolerance for European weakness because the administration in Washington sees that as an emerging threat to the US’s own security.

So, while the USA might want to take a less direct role in the security arrangements of the continent, perhaps we should expect it to take an increasingly direct role in the continent’s political arrangements.

Warren Buffett, 95, has still not departed the investment conglomerate he founded decades ago, and already Berkshire Hathaway is rocked by departures: this morning we learned that his investment protégé Todd Combs is leaving Berkshire for a new role at JPMorgan Chase, as a new guard prepares to take over at the sprawling $1.1tn conglomerate.

Berkshire announced Combs’ departure alongside a series of wider leadership changes on Monday, which come as Buffett prepares to hand over the reins to top Berkshire executive Greg Abel in the new year.

Buffett said that Combs “has resigned to accept an interesting and important job at JPMorgan . . . JPMorgan, as usually is the case, has made a good decision.”

Combs, who until now was chief executive of Geico -the US car insurance company that is one of the most important companies inside the group – is one of two investment managers at Berkshire reporting directly to Buffett. 

Combs will run JPMorgan’s new $10bn Strategic Investment Group, which aims to take stakes in companies critical to national security and is seen as catering to President Donald Trump’s “America First” policies; the 54-year-old will report to Jamie Dimon.

JPMorgan’s $10bn fund, part of a wider $1.5tn financing commitment, turned heads on Wall Street when it was announced in October as it is unusual for banks to take equity stakes in industrial companies. Combs will be tasked with finding investments in the defence, aerospace, healthcare and energy sectors. 

JPMorgan also announced an external advisory council for this program which includes tech founders Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell and former US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.

Combs has been a member of the bank’s board of directors for nine years but is resigning to take his new post.

Dimon described Combs as “one of the greatest investors and leaders I’ve known”.

Buffett hired Combs in 2010 as the company looked to boost its investment bona fides for a time when the now 95-year-old investor was no longer running Berkshire. 

Initially, Combs was a contender to be the future chief investment officer, overseeing Berkshire’s entire $283 BN stock portfolio, and eventually amassed control over tens of billions of dollars of stocks alongside Ted Weschler, Buffett’s other investment deputy.

He was appointed Geico chief executive in 2019 and was also seen as a possible successor to Ajit Jain at the top of Berkshire’s wider insurance division.

However, as the FT reports, Abel’s ascent at the company raised questions over the roles Combs and Weschler would have overseeing Berkshire’s stocks. Buffett last year said that he believed his successor should have the final say over investment decisions, including how the company’s cash is deployed to invest in stocks.

Nancy Pierce, Geico’s chief operating officer, will replace Combs at the top of the unit, one of the largest auto insurers in the country.

There were other notable moves announced today: Berkshire’s long-standing chief financial officer, Marc Hamburg, would retire in 2027 after 40 years at the company, and for the first time appointed a general counsel to lead its legal efforts. Hamburg will be replaced by the chief financial officer of Berkshire’s energy unit, Charles Chang.

“He has done more for this company than many of our shareholders will ever know,” Buffett said of Hamburg. “His impact has been extraordinary.”

Michael O’Sullivan, who earlier in his career was a partner at the law firm founded by late-Berkshire vice chair Charlie Munger, will start as general counsel in January. He has had the role at the messaging app Snap since 2017.

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The House of Representatives voted to pass two bills on Monday that increase protections for taxpayers in matters related to penalties imposed by the IRS and tax dispute proceedings in the U.S. Tax Court.

The first bill, HR 5346, the Fair and Accountable IRS Reviews Act, relates to supervisory approval for certain federal penalties imposed by IRS agents on taxpayers.

An IRS employee can impose certain federal penalties on taxpayers after gaining written authorization from their immediate supervisor.

Under present regulations, an immediate supervisor is broadly defined as an individual tasked with reviewing another employee’s proposed penalties, and not necessarily the supervisor to whom the IRS employee reports, according to a fact sheet from the House Committee on Ways and Means.

IRS agents can thus “shop around for sympathetic supervisors,” it said, which weakens taxpayer protections.

“This circular definition is so broad that IRS agents can obtain approval to apply tax penalties on taxpayers from virtually any other employee,” the fact sheet states.

The bill seeks to resolve the issue by defining an immediate supervisor “to be the person to whom the individual making the determination reports,” the fact sheet said.

In addition, the bill clarifies that supervisory approval of a penalty will only be considered timely if such approval is obtained in writing before a taxpayer is notified of such a penalty.

In a Dec. 3 statement, the House Ways and Means Committee said the bill will ensure that “rogue IRS agents are not levying fines and penalties on taxpayers without specific supervisory approval.”

The second bill, HR 5349, the Tax Court Improvement Act, seeks to expand the authority of the U.S. Tax Court in issuing subpoenas. The court will be authorized to extend certain petition deadlines and also institute other changes to court procedures.

The U.S. Tax Court is a federal trial court specializing in adjudicating disputes related to federal income tax, a process that typically takes place before formal tax assessments are conducted by the IRS, according to a fact sheet from the House Committee on Ways and Means.

The Tax Court is the only forum in the United States where taxpayers can litigate issues without having to first pay in full the taxes that are being disputed.

The bill aims to solve inefficiencies in the Tax Court structure, it said.

For instance, the court currently has limited pre-trial discovery powers, which cause “unnecessary delays in resolutions of cases” since there are limited options for parties in a trial to obtain documents relevant to a case in a timely manner, the fact sheet said.

The Tax Court Improvement Act solves this issue by expanding the court’s powers. It authorizes the court to sign subpoenas to produce relevant documents in the discovery phase of the case, ensuring that parties receive these documents prior to a hearing.

Since the bill allows the court to extend petition filing deadlines, it also resolves difficulties faced by taxpayers when timely filing is impractical and impossible, according to the fact sheet.

In addition, the Act will hold Tax Court judges to the same standards for disqualification that apply to other federal judges.

Other provisions of the bill include expanding the type of proceedings for which special trial judges may be appointed, authorizing special trial judges to impose a jail term of up to 30 days and a maximum fine of $5,000 for contempt of court, and requiring judges to recuse themselves in certain circumstances.

The bills have the backing of multiple groups, such as the National Taxpayers Union and the Taxpayers Protection Alliance. Both bills have been sent to the Senate.

Projected Revenues

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projects that the enactment of both bills will generate revenues over the coming decade.

In a Nov. 19 statement, the CBO said an analysis by the office and the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimates that enacting the Tax Court Improvement Act would increase revenues by a net $6 million between 2026 and 2035, with administrative costs rising minimally by less than $500,000 between 2026 and 2030.

CBO said in another Nov. 19 statement that the Fair and Accountable IRS Reviews Act is projected to boost revenues by $117 million between 2026 and 2035, with administration costs increasing by less than half a million dollars for the 2026–2030 period.

The passage of both bills comes as the IRS recently urged Americans to start preparing for filing taxes in the 2026 filing season, citing changes in tax laws and other factors.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Donald Trump in July, will significantly affect federal taxes, deductions, and credits, according to agency officials.

“A little advance work preparing paperwork and organizing information now can help with filing tax returns quickly and accurately,” the agency said.

President Trump has continued to speak frankly about Zelensky and the Ukrainian government, at a moment of a sense of stalled frustration on the peace plan with Russia unveiled last month. His frustration with Keiv continues to show, especially after high hopes for his 28-point peace plan were dashed by yet more roadblocks which saw his Thanksgiving deadline quickly come and go.

While speaking on the red carpet at the Kennedy Center Honors on Sunday night, Trump bluntly stated he was “a bit disappointed” that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had not yet reviewed Washington’s draft of the latest proposed peace plan to end the war.

“We’ve been speaking to President [Vladimir] Putin, and we’ve been speaking to Ukrainian leaders, including President Zelenskyy, and I have to say that I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn’t yet read the proposal – that was as of a few hours ago,” Trump stated.

He then said “His people love it, but he hasn’t. Russia’s fine with it.” The somewhat negative assessment of the Ukrainian leader comes after Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner on Friday again met with Rustem Umerov, secretary of the National Security and Defense Council of Ukraine, and Ukrainian negotiator Andriy Hnatov in Florida.

Trump at the same event went on to describe the war as “very tough, very nasty” and with mounting heavy casualties which have not abated.

As for Zelensky, he has freshly written on social media in response that “Ukraine is determined to keep working in good faith with the American side to genuinely achieve peace.”

“We covered many aspects and went through key points that could ensure an end to the bloodshed and eliminate the threat of a new Russian full scale invasion, as well as the risk of Russia failing to honor its promises, as has happened repeatedly in the past,” he continued.

Interestingly, while Trump issued critical remarks of Zelensky’s stance, the Kremlin seemed to positively welcome the White House’s new National Security Strategy memo, issued Friday:

Trump’s criticism of Zelensky came as Russia on Sunday welcomed the Trump administration’s new national security strategy in comments by the Kremlin spokesman published by Russia’s Tass news agency.

Dmitry Peskov said the updated strategic document, which spells out the administration’s core foreign policy interests, was largely in line with Moscow’s vision.

“There are statements there against confrontation and in favor of dialogue and building good relations,” he said, adding that Russia hopes this would lead to “further constructive cooperation with Washington on the Ukrainian settlement”.

Likely Moscow especially likes that the document characterizes Europe as weak while warning of an unpredictable, disunified atmosphere on the continent where in desperation European leadership could overreact and escalate war with Russia. For example FT has written of the document:

Donald Trump’s first NSS since returning to office blames European officials for thwarting US efforts to end the war in Ukraine and accuses governments of ignoring a “large European majority” who want peace.

Meanwhile, Trump’s outgoing Ukraine envoy, Keith Kellogg, while addressing the Reagan National Defense Forum on Saturday claimed that the peace process was “in the last 10 meters.” But it’s a far different question and highly dubious whether the two warring sides actually see real lasting peace as so much as on the horizon at this point.

Trump says that Zelensky didn’t read US peace proposal, which “his people love” & “Russia is fine with”: “I’m a little bit disappointed that President Zelensky hasn’t yet read the proposal… His people love it. But he hasn’t. Russia is fine with it.” pic.twitter.com/QJpeeyGMPT

— Ivan Katchanovski (@I_Katchanovski) December 8, 2025

On Monday leaders from the United Kingdom, France, and Germany meeting with Zelensky in London. They are still trying to forge a more ‘just’ and ‘fair’ alternative or counter peace plan.

“We stand with Ukraine,” UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer said while setting out his “principles”.

He described, “If there is to be a ceasefire then it needs to be a just and lasting ceasefire; that is why it is so important we repeatedly set out the principle that matters about Ukraine are for Ukraine.” He added at the start of the meeting: “We stand here to support you in the conflict and support you in the negotiations.” The Europeans have by and large rejected and balked at the US proposal to give up the Donbas and Crimea.