April 21 (Reuters) – Wall Street’s main indexes opened down on Monday after U.S. President Donald Trump’s renewed attacks against Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sparked concerns about the central bank’s independence and rattled investors grappling with an escalating trade war. The Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI), opens new tab fell 236.2 points, or 0.60%, at the open to 38,906.04. The S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab fell 49.8 points, or 0.94%, at the open to 5,232.94​, while the Nasdaq Composite (.IXIC), opens new tab dropped 233.7 points, or 1.43%, to 16,052.764 at the opening bell.

Gold prices broke $3,400 on Monday, hitting a new record as President Donald Trump’s threats against the Federal Reserve’s independence and his tariffs shake investor confidence in the U.S. economy. Gold futures jumped about 2.69% to $3,418 per ounce by 8:20 a.m. ET on Monday, with investors buying the precious metal as the dollar hit a three-year low. Gold has jumped about 29% since the start of the year and nearly 8% since Trump unveiled his sweeping tariffs on April 2. Trump said last Thursday that Fed Chair Jerome Powell’s “termination cannot come fast enough,” after the U.S. central bank chief warned that the president’s tariffs will likely increase inflation in the near term. Trump is looking into whether he can fire Powell, White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett said Friday. The president has again called for Powell to cut interest rates, questioning the central bank chief’s judgement. Gold has been on a tear this year as confidence in the U.S. falls and central banks buy up the precious metal. Citi sees gold prices rallying to $3,500 over the next three months as investment demand outstrips supply from mining. “We estimate that tariff-related US and global growth concerns are likely to continue to combine with strong central bank and other institutional demand,” analysts led by Kenny Hu told clients in a recent note.

A Boeing jet earmarked for China was returning to the United States on Friday, flight tracking data showed, as the planemaker’s flagship delivery plant outside Shanghai was drawn into a deepening tariff war between Beijing and Washington.

The return of one of several jets waiting for final work and handover to a Chinese carrier at the completion center in Zhoushan is the latest sign of disruption to deliveries from a breakdown in the industry’s decades-old duty-free status.

In a sign that Boeing was preparing for normal business just weeks before U.S. President Donald Trump announced tariffs on April 2, three new 737 Max planes had flown from Boeing in Seattle to Zhoushan in March.

Another arrived last week at Zhoushan, where Boeing installs interiors and paints liveries before handing over to customers, according to Flightradar24 data.

But on Friday, one of the first batch of jets took off again without being delivered and flew from Zhoushan to the U.S. territory of Guam — one of the stops such flights make as they cross the Pacific — indicating it was heading back to Seattle.

Boeing declined to comment.

The 5,000-mile trip back to Boeing’s main factory comes as the planemaker’s business in China is under scrutiny over the tariff dispute.

Bloomberg News reported earlier this week that Boeing faced a Chinese ban on imports, part of the escalating confrontation over U.S. President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” global tariffs.

There has been no official comment from Beijing, or in Chinese state media.

Senior aviation and aerospace industry sources told Reuters they were not aware of formal instructions against taking Boeing planes.

Even so, industry sources and analysts widely agreed that the imposition of tariffs on U.S. goods by Beijing in response to Trump’s actions would effectively block aircraft imports without any formal ban.

One senior industry source said Boeing and suppliers were planning on the basis that it would not be delivering planes to China for the time being.

Photos posted to plane-spotting websites in February showed that the repatriated plane was decorated with a livery for Xiamen Airlines, majority owned by China Southern 600029.SS.

One source said it was expected to be delivered to Xiamen, which did not reply to a request for comment.

Aviation publication The Air Current, which first reported the decision to withdraw some undelivered jets from Zhoushan, said one unnamed Chinese airline had separately walked away from a commitment to lease a Boeing aircraft.

Industry sources said the return flight came despite some discussions over leaving undelivered jets in bonded storage, meaning they would not be officially imported or tariffed.

Chinese customs did not reply to a request for comment.

Delivery limbo

The tariff war and apparent U-turn over deliveries come as Boeing has been recovering from an almost five-year import freeze on 737 Max jets and a previous round of trade tensions.

Boeing opened the completion plant in Zhoushan — a major cargo hub which, together with nearby Ningbo, hosts one of the world’s busiest ports — in 2018 under the shadow of a previous round of trade tensions during Trump’s first presidency.

Although Boeing has not followed Airbus in assembling full airplanes in China, analysts said the aim was to build a lead in one of the world’s largest air travel markets.

Bloomberg News also reported that Beijing has asked Chinese carriers to halt purchases of U.S.-made aircraft parts. All modern commercial jets depend heavily on such components.

Two U.S. industry sources said they were given no clear instructions not to ship parts to China. A separate source, who runs a maintenance and repair shop for aircraft in China, said they had no issues importing American parts.

China’s foreign ministry declined to comment.

Asked by the media about the reported bans, a spokesperson said: “I’d refer you to competent authorities.”

Analysts say that confusion over changing tariffs could leave many aircraft deliveries in limbo, with some airline CEOs saying they would defer delivery of planes rather than pay duties.

Boeing historically sent a quarter of its deliveries to China, but this has been falling following earlier tensions, a 737 Max safety crisis, and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Boeing data shows 130 unfilled orders for China-based airlines and lessors. Industry sources say a significant portion of the more than 760 unfilled orders for which Boeing has yet to name a buyer are destined for China.

Analysts said a short-term halt in deliveries to China would not have an immediate major impact on Boeing, since it could serve other airlines and Airbus lacks spare capacity.

President Donald Trump would put the credibility of the dollar on the line and destabilize the US economy if he fired Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, French Finance Minister Eric Lombard warned.

“Donald Trump has hurt the credibility of the dollar with his aggressive moves on tariffs — for a long time,” Lombard said in an interview published in the La Tribune Dimanche newspaper. If Powell is pushed out “this credibility will be harmed even more, with developments in the bond market.”

The result would be higher costs to service the debt and “a profound disorganization of the country’s economy,” Lombard said, adding that the consequences would bring the US sooner or later to talks to end the tensions.

Lombard’s comments come after Trump, frustrated with Powell’s caution to cut US interest rates, posted on social media Thursday that Powell’s “termination couldn’t come quickly enough.” It wasn’t clear whether he meant he wanted to fire Powell or was eager for the end of his term, which is May 2026. National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett said Friday Trump was studying whether he could fire him.

President Emmanuel Macron has opposed Trump on a series of issues including Ukraine, trade and even offered refuge in France for US-based scientists whose federal research funding has been cut.

Even so, Lombard’s comments are unusually direct about US domestic matters.

Read more: Trump Studying If Removing Powell Is Option, Hassett Says

On tariffs, France’s finance minister said the 10% tariffs Trump has imposed on imports from the EU don’t constitute “common ground” and that Europe’s goal is for a free trade zone with the US.

The 10% level is “a huge increase that isn’t sustainable for the US economy and represents major risks for global trade,” Lombard said.

The finance minister also called on European CEOs to show “patriotism” and work with their governments so the region doesn’t lose out.

On Thursday, French billionaire Bernard Arnault, whose group LVMH owns Champagne labels like Moët & Chandon and Veuve Clicquot as well as Hennessy Cognac, seemed to suggest that EU leaders weren’t pushing hard enough for an accord on tariffs.

U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson on Friday halted the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s attempt to lay off the vast majority of its employees and gut the agency.

Her order comes after the CFPB had sent reduction-in-force notices to more than 1,400 staffers across the agency on Thursday.

The CFPB had proceeded with layoffs after a three-judge panel last week had ruled the agency could conduct a reduction in force if it made “a particularized assessment” to determine which employees were “unnecessary” for the bureau’s performance of its statutory duties.

But the CFPB’s union immediately took legal action seeking to halt the mass layoffs, saying the agency had not in fact conducted the thorough assessment required by that three-judge panel.

Judge Jackson appeared skeptical as well.

She said in her order on Friday that the CFPB appeared to be “thumbing their nose” at her own court as well as the appeals court.

Judge Jackson scheduled a hearing to consider the legality of the mass layoffs for April 28.

Mass layoffs would have gutted the agency

With this reduction in force and earlier layoffs of probationary workers, the CFPB intended to retain just 207 of the 1,690 employees it had before the Trump administration began its efforts to shrink the bureau and reduce the scope of its work.

“An approximately 200 person agency allows the Bureau to fulfill its statutory duties and better aligns with the new leadership’s priorities and management philosophy,” wrote CFPB chief legal counsel Mark Paoletta in a declaration filed Friday morning.

Laurel Wamsley is covering what’s happening at CFPB. If you have a tip, you can contact her securely on Signal at laurel.96.

Staffers at the agency began receiving reduction-in-force (RIF) notices on Thursday afternoon.

“This RIF action is necessary to restructure the Bureau’s operations to better reflect the agency’s priorities and mission,” said the notices sent to CFPB staff.

But the union pushed back against the mass firings, saying the CFPB could not have “made a ‘particularized assessment’ of each employee’s role in the three-and-a-half business days since the court of appeals imposed that requirement.”

“It is unfathomable that cutting the Bureau’s staff by 90 percent in just 24 hours, with no notice to people to prepare for that elimination, would not ‘interfere with the performance’ of its statutory duties,” wrote attorneys representing the CFPB employees union in their filing against the mass firings.

The CFPB union also submitted to the court a declaration from an agency employee under the pseudonym Alex Doe, who said they were on the team charged with planning the RIF.

The employee describes a hasty and stressful process that was managed by a member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) team.

The employee said in the filing that team members raised the concern that there was a court order requiring that they do a particularized assessment, but “they were told that all that mattered was the numbers.”

The division head of the Office of Research also said in a declaration that his team had been cut from 57 employees to three staff “who lack certain technical expertise required to fulfill the required functions” — and that he and senior leaders in his unit had not been consulted about the reduction or how they would impact the unit’s “mandatory statutory duties.”

New direction for the CFPB

The layoff notices came a day after after the agency’s chief legal counsel sent a memo to CFPB employees on Wednesday evening that sets a new direction for the bureau.

In the memo, chief legal officer Mark Paoletta said that the Bureau would lean on states to carry out more enforcement and supervision activities, arguing that doing so would allow the agency to “to focus on tangible harms to consumers.”

Paoletta also said the bureau would shift its focus back to banks and depository institutions such as credit unions.

He added the bureau would “deprioritize” a number of areas it has regulated in recent years, including medical debt, peer-to-peer platforms, and digital payments.

The last item is notable as Elon Musk, who has tweeted “CFPB RIP”, is building a digital payments platform –- a platform that would ostensibly be under CFPB’s oversight. In February, Musk’s DOGE team entered the bureau’s Washington headquarters and took control of key systems.

The CFPB, which was founded in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, has become a target of the Trump administration as well as some in Silicon Valley and on Wall Street, who say it overreaches in its regulation.

Consumer organizations criticized the bureau’s reorientation as described in Paoletta’s memo, saying it marked a significant retrenchment in its mission.

“The CFPB cannot simply shirk the consumer protection responsibilities Congress gave it and expect states to enforce federal law,” said Lauren Saunders, associate director of the National Consumer Law Center.

WASHINGTON, April 18 (Reuters) – White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Friday said President Donald Trump and his team were continuing to study if they could fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, a sign that such a move, a matter of great consequence for the central bank’s independence and for global markets, is still an option.

“The president and his team will continue to study that matter,” Hassett said at the White House when a reporter asked if “firing Jay Powell is an option in a way that it wasn’t before.”

Donald Trump is showing why independent central banks are a good idea.

The president’s double tirade against Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Thursday conjured another dark cloud over financial markets and an economy repeatedly traumatized by his tariff and trade-war chaos.

“If I want him out, he’ll be out of there real fast, believe me,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office. “I’m not happy with him.”

Trump is furious that Powell has ignored his frequent demands for a swift lowering of interest rates that would potentially make it easier for Americans to borrow to buy homes and could improve consumer sentiment and boost stocks. The Fed made three consecutive rate cuts last year after bringing inflation nearly to target. But it has paused the strategy amid concerns over growing economic uncertainty, which have been exacerbated by Trump’s volatile leadership since taking office less than three months ago.

On Thursday morning, a short-tempered Trump appeared incensed over Powell’s warning a day earlier that the tariffs would likely cause inflation and higher unemployment and that some of their burden “would be paid by the public.”

Powell’s speech to the Economic Club of Chicago was the clearest statement yet by a key financial official about the potential impact of Trump’s policies. He was stating what almost every serious economist believes about the impact of tariffs. But his comments conflicted with the president’s quixotic belief in the almost mystical power of taxing imports and his insistence that such a strategy will not spike prices and pass higher costs on to consumers.

Trump is fuming over economic criticism

The context of Trump’s attack on Powell Thursday is also important.

It came amid an angry defense of his economic management, in which he blamed President Joe Biden multiple times – even though the economy was humming when the Oval Office changed hands – before he turned on the Fed chief. The president’s tetchy mood left a very strong impression that he was seeking out scapegoats in case his trade war strategy fails and he can’t secure deals with nations he’s targeted with tariffs.

“If things continue to go down and a deal is not made, he’s going to blame the downturn in the market on Jay Powell and say that it was because he didn’t cut the rates,” Wall Street trader Peter Tuchman told CNN’s Kate Bolduan on Thursday.

The president did nothing to dispel the impression that his criticism of Powell was designed to trigger interest rate cuts that would help his own political priorities and prospects. “He’s going to have a lot of political pressure. You know … I think there’s a lot of political pressure for him to lower interest rates,” Trump said.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren, the top Democrat on the Senate Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs Committee, is a frequent critic of Powell. But she argued on CNBC that it is important that the Fed chair stay in his post. “I have tangled with him on a regular basis about both regulations and interest rates but understand this: If Chairman Powell can be fired by the president of the United States, it will crash markets in the United States,” Warren said.

The Massachusetts senator, a former Harvard Law professor, argued that the strength of the US financial system relies on the idea that “the big pieces move independent of the politics.” She added: “If interest rates in the US are subject to a president who just wants to wave his magic wand, this doesn’t distinguish us from any two other two-bit dictatorship around the world where everyone knows that your big investment risk is: Will that dictator will wake up in the morning and have a tummy ache and decide to cause this problem or favor that friend?”

Trump’s anger at Powell was exacerbated because the European Central Bank just cut rates for the seventh time in a year, causing him to ask why the Federal Reserve is not being similarly aggressive. “He’s too late — always too late. A little slow. And I’m not happy with him. I let him know it,” the president said. Previously, in an early morning post on his Truth Social network, Trump raised expectations that he could fire Powell by saying his “termination cannot come soon enough.”

The president’s attacks, however, belie Powell’s record. His stewardship of the economy has been steady through a tumultuous period that included the Covid-19 pandemic and its subsequent financial crisis. And he steered inflation down from above 9% to its current rate of 2.4% without triggering widespread unemployment in a soft landing that many analysts did not believe was possible.

Powell became Fed chair in 2018 after he was nominated by Trump. He was reappointed by President Joe Biden in 2022. His current term ends in May 2026.

Why an independent Fed is important

The Federal Reserve was set up by Congress in 1913 as an independent body to insulate it from the kind of political pressure that the president is imposing. Its mission is to secure stable prices and employment – a mission that sometimes puts it at odds with the short-term needs of lawmakers and presidents.

If Trump were to acquire the power to manipulate interest rates at will – through a proxy Fed chair or otherwise – he’d spark confusion on the financial markets, buckle confidence in the US economy and almost certainly spike inflation. And it would be a further sign that America’s global reputation as a rock of financial stability is quickly eroding in his second term.

Potential market turmoil – following wild drops and swings in share prices since Trump launched his tariff war this month – may be one factor in persuading Trump to leave Powell in place. The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that the president has talked about firing Powell but that senior officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, have so far talked him out of it.

It is generally accepted in Washington that the president lacks the power to dismiss board members overseeing independent agencies without cause. But the administration is hoping the Supreme Court will overturn a 1935 legal precedent on which such assumptions are based.

Trump’s growing contempt for sound governance and the courts – and his constant efforts to expand presidential power on questionable terms – mean that Powell’s future is not certain. This is a White House that acts first and deals with the consequences of potential illegality later.

But there’s a chance the president is just venting. After all, he repeatedly complained about Powell’s caution during his first term. Forbes reported last year that he ordered Wilbur Ross to call the Fed chief and order him to lower rates, citing the former Commerce secretary’s memoir.

But Trump has also never been so unconstrained. In his new administration, he’s picked officials who are loath to temper his wildest instincts. Bessent is seen as a moderating influence. Earlier this week, he told Bloomberg that “monetary policy is a jewel box that’s got to be preserved.” But the Treasury secretary lacks significant political experience. And history shows that any subordinate who seeks to rein in the president could soon find themselves fired.

New uncertainty over Powell’s future comes with the economy reeling from successive shocks over Trump’s tariff policy – especially the 145% duties imposed on Chinese imports. The impact of this hardline approach could soon hit in the form of high prices and shortages of key consumer goods and other items. While Trump has frozen reciprocal tariffs on dozens of countries and says multiple governments are offering trade deals, it remains unclear whether he’ll be able to deliver on his goal of bringing back manufacturing and jobs in the short term.

Consumer confidence has meanwhile been tumbling, and companies are struggling to set expectations and budgets for the year ahead, raising more fears that the economy could soon slip into recession.

Even if Trump doesn’t try to dismiss Powell, but simply continues to talk about doing so, he could rattle investor confidence.

This is why most presidents understand interest rate policy – as infuriating as it may often be – is best left to the independent Fed.

Springtime home shoppers may be feeling the impact of an intensifying trade war.

The average rate on a standard, 30-year fixed mortgage was 6.83% in the week ending April 17, up from 6.62% a week ago, mortgage financing provider Freddie Mac said Thursday.

That’s the largest one-week jump in mortgage rates in nearly a year.

Interest rates on home loans had been steadily falling since March, which may have encouraged some prospective buyers to enter the market at the start of peak homebuying season. But President Donald Trump’s scattered approach to tariffs and an escalating trade war with China has injected volatility into the stock market, and resulted in a sell-off in US bonds last week.

Mortgage rates track the benchmark US 10-year Treasury yield, which spiked as high as 4.5% last Wednesday. The 10-year has fallen slightly since then, trading at around 4.3% on Thursday.

The average 30-year fixed mortgage rate remains below the 7% level it had reached this time last year, though.

“At this time last year, rates reached 7.1% while purchase application demand was 13% lower than it is today, a clear sign that this year’s spring homebuying season is off to a stronger start,” said Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist.

Chinese online retailer Temu, whose “Shop like a billionaire” marketing campaign made its way to last year’s Super Bowl, has dramatically slashed its online ad spending in the U.S. and seen its ranking in Apple’s
App Store plunge following President Donald Trump’s sweeping tariffs on trade partners.

Temu, which is owned by Chinese e-commerce giant PDD Holdings, had been on an online advertising blitz in recent years in a bid to attract deal-hungry American shoppers to its site. With hefty spending on TV ads as well across Facebook, the company promoted clothing, jewelry, home goods and electronics at bargain basement prices.

The strategy was so effective that Temu topped Apple’s list of the most downloaded free apps in the U.S. for the past two years. Downloads of Temu on Apple’s App Store have fallen 62% in recent days, according to data from SimilarWeb, a digital data and analytics company. Ads for 50-cent eyebrow trimmers and $5 t-shirts that used to blanket Google
search results and Facebook feeds have all but disappeared.

President Trump’s tariffs have upended Temu’s business model, along with its advertising strategy. Packages shipped from China are now subject to a tariff rate of 145%, while the de minimis provision, which allows shipments worth less than $800 to enter the country duty-free, is set to go away on May 2.

Temu and Shein, a fast-fashion marketplace with ties to China, plan to raise their prices in response to the tariffs. Both companies posted notices to their websites in recent days that warned they’ll be raising prices late next week.

“Due to recent changes in global trade rules and tariffs, our operating expenses have gone up,” Temu said on its site. “To keep offering the products you love without compromising on quality, we will be making price adjustments starting April 25, 2025.”

Sellers on Amazon’s third-party marketplace, many of whom source their products from China, have said they’re considering raising prices as they reckon with higher costs from the tariffs. Many businesses on TikTok Shop, the social media app’s marketplace, also count on Chinese manufacturers for their items.

Amazon launched a competitor to Temu last November, called Amazon Haul, which features items under $20 that are largely from China.

A day after Nvidia revealed it would incur $5.5 billion in costs related to canceled orders for the H20 chip, which the government said this week requires a license to export to China, the company said it abides by rules on where it can sell its artificial intelligence processors.

“The U.S. government instructs American businesses on what they can sell and where — we follow the government’s directions to the letter,” an Nvidia representative said in a statement.

Nvidia said the statement was in response to a House Select Committee focused on national security threats from China, which opened an investigation into Nvidia’s sales on Wednesday. The H20 was introduced by Nvidia after the Biden administration restricted AI chip exports in 2022. It’s a slowed-down version intended to comply with U.S. export controls.

Nvidia’s brief comment is an indication of how the company is going to defend its business in Washington, D.C., as its technology draws increased scrutiny related to national defense and security. The company’s stock price tumbled almost 7% on Wednesday.

Nvidia’s chips have the vast majority of the market for AI applications, and some were used by China’s DeepSeek to build R1, which upended markets in January.

On Wednesday, the chipmaker touted the taxes it paid, its U.S.-based workforce, and its role as a technology leader.

The company’s exports even help the U.S. fix its trade deficit, the statement said, directly addressing President Trump’s stated reason for introducing tariffs earlier this month.

“NVIDIA protects and enhances national security by creating U.S. jobs and infrastructure, promoting U.S. technology leadership, bringing billions of dollars of tax revenue to the U.S. treasury, and alleviating the massive U.S. trade deficit,” according to the statement.

One challenge for Nvidia is that the H20 was legal for export to China until last week, under previous Biden administration rules. But the House Select Committee said on Wednesday the sale of H20 chips for the past year was effectively a “loophole.”

“The technology industry supports America when it exports to well-known companies worldwide – if the government felt otherwise, it would instruct us,” Nvidia said in its statement.

The government is also investigating whether shipments of restricted chips to China went through Singapore, Nvidia’s second-largest market by billing address with just under $24 billion in sales in the company’s past fiscal year, according to filings.

Nvidia clarified on Wednesday that its Singapore revenue indicates sales with a billing address in the country, often for subsidiaries of U.S. customers.

“The associated products are shipped to other locations, including the United States and Taiwan, not to China,” Nvidia said.

In addition to Chinese export controls and the congressional investigation, Nvidia also faces additional restrictions on what it can export starting next month, under “AI diffusion rules” first proposed by the Biden administration.