Overnight Finance: Trump delays tariffs for key trading partners | Dems want investigation into Mulvaney lobbyist remarks | Trump lawyer Cohen hit with $282K tax bill | Apple plans $100B stock buyback

Happy Tuesday and welcome back to Overnight Finance, where all of our favorite readers are exempted from tariffs forever. I’m Sylvan Lane, and here’s your nightly guide to everything affecting your bills, bank account and bottom line.

 

See something I missed? Let me know at slane@digital-stage.thehill.com or tweet me @SylvanLane. And if you like your newsletter, you can subscribe to it here: http://bit.ly/1NxxW2N.

 

THE BIG DEAL: President Trump is delaying a decision on implementing steel and aluminum tariffs for several close U.S. trading partners, avoiding a major trade skirmish for now. 

Trump is pushing the decisions to June 1 for the European Union (EU), Canada and Mexico while reaching preliminary agreements with several other U.S. allies ahead of a looming midnight deadline, the White House announced on Monday evening.

Negotiations will continue for the next 30 days with the 28-member bloc, as well as Canada and Mexico. The White House said this would be the final period to reach a deal with the key trading partners.

The administration has also reached agreements in principle on tariffs with Australia, Argentina and Brazil, which are expected to be completed in the next month.

The countries, which represent major metals exporters to the United States, have been in negotiations for weeks with the Trump administration to avoid steep tariffs of 25 percent on steel and 10 percent on aluminum. The Hill’s Vicki Needham and Niv Elis tell us more here. 

 

EU, UK call for permanent exemption: The European Union and the United Kingdom urged the White House to grant them permanent exemptions from steep steel and aluminum tariffs to avoid further inflaming trade tensions.

U.S. allies keen to work with Washington and other trading partners on global overcapacity of steel say Trump’s decision to delay the tariffs by a month only creates more problems. 

“The U.S. decision prolongs market uncertainty, which is already affecting business decisions,” the European Commission said in a statement. “The EU should be fully and permanently exempted from these measures, as they cannot be justified on the grounds of national security,” the Commission said. Read more here.

 

What comes next: Canada and Mexico, which have repeatedly said they expect a permanent exemption from the tariffs, were not given any guarantees despite weeks of recent negotiations on the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

Talks on NAFTA, which have been ongoing for the past month in Washington, will resume on May 7. 

Trade leaders in Mexico and Canada have rejected Trump’s attempts to tie their tariff treatment to the outcome of the massive trade agreement.

The EU, which has been a vocal critic of the tariffs, has threatened $3.5 billion in retaliatory tariffs on jeans, motorcycles and orange juice if Trump follows through with metals tariffs.

 

ON TAP FOR TOMORROW

• Center for Responsible Lending and several civil rights groups host a discussion on the Federal Housing Administration, 8:45 a.m.

• The Brookings Institution hosts an event on the future of trade in U.S.-Japan relations, 10 a.m.

• The Heritage Foundation hosts an event entitled “Deconstructing the Administrative State: How Corporations and Big Government Collaborate,” 11 a.m.

 

LEADING THE DAY

Senate Dems request investigation of Mulvaney over lobbyist remarks: A group of Senate Democrats want federal investigators to probe if Mick Mulvaney, Trump’s budget director and the acting director of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), broke a law that limits political activities for federal employees. 

Mulvaney, who is both the director of the Office of Management and Budget and the interim chief of the CFPB, told bankers last week that when he was a member of Congress he had a “hierarchy” and would only consider meeting with lobbyists who donated to his campaigns. 

“If you were a lobbyist who never gave us money, I didn’t talk to you. If you were a lobbyist who gave us money, I might talk to you. If you came from back home and sat in my lobby, I would talk to you without exception, regardless of the financial contributions,” Mulvaney said.

Democratic Sens. Jeff Merkley (Ore.), Sherrod Brown (Ohio), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.), Ron Wyden (Ore.) and Catherine Cortez Masto (Nev.) and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) sent a letter to the Office of Special Counsel on Tuesday asking for an investigation of whether Mulvaney violated the Hatch Act. The Hill’s Jordain Carney has more on the request here.

 

Trump lawyer Michael Cohen hit with $282k tax bill in New York: President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, owes hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid taxes relating to his ownership of a number of New York City taxi cabs, Bloomberg News reports.

Cohen in April was hit with state warrants for $185,000 in unpaid taxes on his taxi companies, a hefty sum that raises his total tax debt on a number of various taxi firms to $282,000, according to the report.

The top Trump aide built his wealth owning taxi medallions in Chicago and New York before eventually joining the Trump Organization as Trump’s personal “fixer,” the news outlet noted. FBI agents during a raid of Cohen’s offices sought information related to the medallions, possibly signaling a new look at his finances.

Cohen himself reportedly owns around 30 medallions for taxis in New York and owns about 22 cabs in Chicago.

 

Apple announces $100-billion stock buyback fueled by tax-cut profits: Apple plans to buy back $100 billion in shares, the company announced Tuesday.

The move comes as Apple beat quarterly revenue and profit projections from analysts and as the company reaps the benefits of massive tax cuts from the Republican tax law.

The new buyback comes on top of an existing plan to repurchase $210 billion worth of shares.
The company increased its dividends by 16 percent as well, raising them to 73 cents a share. Here’s more from The Hill’s Ali Breland.

 

Further reading: Investment boom from Trump’s tax cut has yet to appear — The New York Times

 

MARKET CHECK: Stocks were mixed Tuesday as losses in industrials and consumer goods battled with gains in tech shares. The Dow Jones Industrial Average sunk 64 points (0.27 percent) on the day while the Nasdaq gained close to 1 percent, boosted by Apple’s positive earnings report. The S&P 500 rose 0.25 percent.

 

FINANCE IN FOCUS: Lawmakers are pushing to bolster the power of a secretive federal panel that monitors foreign investments for national security risks.

The House and Senate are close to acting on a bipartisan proposal that would expand the kinds of business deals that can be blocked or impeded by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States. (CFIUS), an interagency committee led by the Treasury secretary.

The Trump administration has endorsed the bill, which would expand the jurisdiction of CFIUS and add layers of national security analysis to the panel’s reviews. Check TheHill.com tomorrow morning for my full look at how lawmakers want to empower CFIUS and why those plans are sending chills throughout the business world.

 

GOOD TO KNOW

• The top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Committee is urging the Treasury Department and IRS to issue guidance “as soon as possible” on a new deduction for business income created by the GOP tax law.
• U.S. factory managers are fuming about Trump’s tariffs, according to Bloomberg.
• Ether, the second-most-valuable cryptocurrency, is under regulatory scrutiny, according to The Wall Street Journal.
  
• President Trump’s proposed tariffs on Chinese imports, combined with retaliation promised by Beijing, would hurt the economy and cause U.S. job losses, a new study showed on Tuesday.
• Chipmaker stocks jumped late Tuesday after Apple reported steady iPhone sales, easing fears of a significant decline.

 

ODDS AND ENDS

• The Republican National Committee (RNC) has spent nearly a quarter of a million dollars on a Trump Organization resort in Florida ahead of its conference there this week, financial disclosure documents show.