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National

President Trump announced that he would delay a scheduled tariff hike on $200 billion of Chinese goods in a series of Sunday tweets, citing "substantial progress" in an ongoing round of U.S.-China trade talks and hinting at an upcoming Mar-a-Lago summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

"I am pleased to report that the U.S. has made substantial progress in our trade talks with China on important structural issues including intellectual property protection, technology transfer, agriculture, services, currency, and many other issues. As a result of these very productive talks, I will be delaying the U.S. increase in tariffs now scheduled for March 1. Assuming both sides make additional progress, we will be planning a Summit for President Xi and myself, at Mar-a-Lago, to conclude an agreement. A very good weekend for U.S. & China!"

Between the lines, via Axios' Jonathan Swan: China hawks inside the administration have long argued the administration should ratchet up tariffs on March 1 because the Chinese have given nothing they can be held to on the most important structural issues that Trump mentions in his tweets.

Trump's announcement will be music to Xi's ears. Over the past decades, successive Chinese administrations have mastered the art of negotiating with the U.S. government — playing for time while they continue stealing U.S. intellectual property, defying global trading rules and using government policy to accelerate their rise towards what Xi views as China's destiny: replacing America as the global superpower.

Global markets will likely breathe a small sigh of relief. That comes with any new data that show Trump taking a more dovish stance towards China.

Go deeper: Grading the impact of Trump's China tariffs

Trump delays tariff hike after "substantial progress" with China

He also hinted at an upcoming Mar-a-Lago summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

World

Trump tariffs

Politics

Top stories & latest news on the Federal Reserve, real-time data, plus the biggest shifts happening in the U.S. and global economy.

Economy

After a record economic expansion, the coronavirus pandemic sent the U.S. economy into a recession as unemployment soared to staggering heights. The country now faces urgent questions about how much stimulus is needed for reeling consumers and businesses, and what a recovery might look like.

Economy & Business

The White House is moving forward with a plan to create a National Security Council committee to question the findings of recent federal climate science reports, according a Washington Post report. 

Why it matters: The panel idea, first reported last week, represents a frontal assault on climate science reports at a time when public opinion is moving to support cutting greenhouse gas emissions. In this case, per the Post, the report the panel is most likely to investigate is the National Climate Assessment. 

Details: The panel would be the reincarnation of an idea put forward by former EPA administrator Scott Pruitt, who pushed for a "red team-blue team" debate on the science modeled after military studies. That proposal was squashed by then-White House chief of staff John Kelly. However, in the new version, there is no other team representing mainstream climate science — other than climate reports themselves.

The new panel will likely include William Happer, a physicist who sits on the National Security Council and has long argued that more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will benefit humanity — a view contradicted by thousands of studies. 

Between the lines: The Trump administration appears to have the National Climate Assessment in its crosshairs. The administration released the assessment on Black Friday last year in an attempt to bury its findings. 

The report detailed the ways that climate change is already harming Americans nationwide, and emphasized that there will be more severe impacts to come if greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically reduced. 

President Trump distanced himself from the NCA, telling Axios on HBO that the climate goes through natural cycles, "Is there climate change? Yeah. Will it go back like this, I mean will it change back? Probably."

He also portrayed it as a report primarily prepared by federal agency scientists working under the Obama administration. 

The state of play: Trump has presented the NCA as an Obama-era project, but most of the report was written and reviewed during Trump's time in office, says Katharine Hayhoe, a climate scientist at Texas Tech University and lead author of the NCA. 

It underwent an exhaustive peer review process that consisted of 2 rounds of review by the numerous federal agencies responsible for climate science activities, multiple public review periods, and 2 rounds of scrutiny from a panel of independent experts put together by the National Academy of Sciences. 

The report garnered 3,416 comments, which are available online along with the responses. 

"This is the most exhaustively reviewed report on climate change in the U.S.," Hayhoe said, noting she responded to hundreds of public comments individually. "At this point the question is who is going to review this who has not already had the chance? The answer is no one. Everyone had a chance to review this."

Unlike the NCA, the new White House panel may be structured to be exempt from disclosure requirements, meaning that it would not have to submit its work for peer review, the Post reports.

What they're saying: Mainstream climate scientists and other experts were withering in their criticism about the proposal.  

"This is like assembling a panel of 'gravity skeptics' who insist it’s safe to jump off tall buildings, except in this case they want to take us all with them," NASA climate scientist Kate Marvel tells Axios. 

"Really what we're seeing is what I call a 'zombie-idea'.  This is a truly bad idea that just refuses to die. All bureaucracies have them — they are just more dangerous when they originate and live in the White House," retired Rear Admiral David Titley, who served as oceanographer of the Navy, tells Axios.

Chris Field, director of Stanford's Woods Insitute for the Environment, notes that a new panel within the White House would also depart from past practice. He tells Axios that the George W. Bush administration turned to the National Academies for such insight on climate science in 2001, leading to the publication of a report that went on to guide policy.

Go deeper: Trump's pipeline of bad climate information

Scientists slam report of White House climate change review panel

Another likened it to a gathering of "gravity skeptics."

US President Donald Trump speaks during a rallyin Charleston, West Virginia on August 21, 2018. Photo: Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images

Climate change

Science

Breaking climate science and policy coverage as extreme weather events reshape communities. Keep tabs on the race to a low carbon economy, which may be bumpy as governments, climate tech startups and major oil and gas companies race to find their niche amid the changing energy landscape.

Energy & Climate

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax, who has denied accusations of sexual assault from two women while rebuffing calls to step down, compared himself to Jim Crow-era lynching victims during an impromptu speech in the state Senate on Sunday, the AP reports.

The big picture: After his speech as he presided over the end of the 2019 Senate session, "stunned senators sat in awkward silence," per the AP. It came just days after state Republicans proposed their plan to hold a public hearing for Fairfax and his accusers — Vanessa Tyson and Meredith Watson — to testify regarding the claims. 

"I’ve heard much about anti-lynching on the floor of this very Senate, where people were not given any due process whatsoever, and we rue that. And we talk about hundreds, at least 100 terror lynchings that have happened in the Commonwealth of Virginia under those very same auspices. And yet we stand here in a rush to judgment with nothing but accusations and no facts and we decide that we are willing to do the same thing." 

Go deeper: A global male leadership crisis

Justin Fairfax compares himself to Jim Crow-era lynching victims

He has denied accusations of sexual assault from two women.

Virginia Lt. Gov. Justin Fairfax. Photo: Logan Cyrus/AFP/Getty Images

Justin Fairfax

Capital

Axios Capital

Warren Buffett's annual letter to shareholders is out, which is always most interesting when the Oracle of Omaha admits to past mistakes.

Why it matters: Buffett has a lesson, in his letter, for "those who regularly preach doom because of government budget deficits". He admits that he was one of those individuals himself, but he's not any more.

Buffett divides America's history into three 77-year periods. The last period happens to coincide with his investing career, which started in 1942 with $114.75 of savings. Buffett was fortunate to begin investing at such an auspicious time, which shortly predated a stunning wartime run-up in America's debt-to-GDP ratio. (In 1942 it was 48%; by 1946 it was 119%.)

America did well in its first century and a half. Then, over the course of Buffett's third 77-year period, we contrived to increase our national debt by about 40,000%. "Suppose you had foreseen this increase and panicked at the prospect of runaway deficits and a worthless currency," writes Buffett. "To protect yourself, you might have eschewed stocks and opted instead to buy 3 1⁄4 ounces of gold with your $114.75."

Buffett, of course, became the world's richest man by investing that $114.75 extremely well. But even if you simply invested it in the broad stock market, it would have turned into $606,811. Had you invested it in gold, by contrast, your small lump of metal would now be worth just $4,200.

The bottom line: There is no evidence from 240 years of American history that the level of the national debt has ever really mattered. The U.S. prints its own currency, and can borrow as much as it likes, increasingly from domestic investors. Per Buffett, deficit hawks have preached doom for decades. They have never been proven correct.

Go deeper: National debt surpasses $22 trillion

In "How America Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Deficits and Debt," the NYT's Neil Irwin explains how the most respected economists in the world, including Larry Summers and Olivier Blanchard, have recalibrated their fiscal opinions in the light of recent data.

Warren Buffett argues government budget deficits don't matter

Buffett said deficit hawks have preached doom for decades and haven't been proven correct.

Business

Warren Buffett

Have you met the minotaurs? A minotaur — the term was coined by Axios editor-in-chief Nick Johnston — is a venture-backed company that has raised more than $1 billion in equity capital. 

Details: We've found 55 of them, of whom 25 are American and 3 are in financial services. The biggest minotaur, by far, is Ant Financial, the Alibaba-backed financial-services giant. It owns Alipay, the enormous mobile payments service; it also owns the world's largest money-market fund.

Paytm can be thought of as the Indian version of Ant Financial; it has raised $3.6 billion in equity capital.

SoFi, in the US, has raised $1.9 billion, and is branching out rapidly from its core business of refinancing student loans. Its most recent valuation was $4.4 billion.

Stripe, a near minotaur, is also American, although it was started by two Irish brothers. It powers a broad range of online and mobile payments, and was most recently valued at $22.5 billion.

Stripe is worth less than Square, another payments company that went public in 2015 at a valuation of $2.9 billion.

Today, Square is worth more than $31 billion, after having raised a total of $778 million in equity capital, per PitchBook. That's $547 million before the IPO, and then another $243 million when it went public, most of which was primary issuance.

Stripe has raised around $800 million in private capital. It's not clear how those investors will be able to cash out: Stripe still says it has "no plans" to go public.

Go deeper: Meet the startups that have raised more than $1 billion

Editor's note: this story has been corrected to show that Stripe has about $800 million in equity financing, not $1.05 billion.

The 3 fintech minotaurs with more than $1 billion in equity capital

They're venture-backed companies that have raised more than $1 billion in equity capital.

Private equity

Axios Pro: Deals

American banks are minting money. In 2018, they made $237 billion in profits, bringing their average return on assets to an extremely healthy 1.35%. That's up from 0.97% in 2017. With banking so profitable, a lot of new players are looking to get in on the game, or to increase their market share.

The big picture: In a tech-obsessed world, a broad range of institutions have decided that the future of banking lies in apps. The logic is simple: Increasingly, Americans want to bank on their phones, rather than in expensive-to-maintain branches, so banks should give them what they want.

Goldman Sachs, which already has an online savings account called Marcus and a cash-management app called Clarity, is reportedly going to launch a new card designed for iPhones in particular. Expect something beautiful, designed by Apple.

Aspiration, an eco-friendly mobile-first bank, has relaunched its product with a slew of attractive features including cash back on debit card purchases, zero ATM fees worldwide, and 2% interest on deposits.

Varo offers a savings account paying as much as 2.8% to customers who use its checking product.

Other neobanks including Chime, Acorns, and Simple are also competing hard; even JPMorgan Chase has one, called Finn.

Banks, prepaid debit cards, and brokerages are all blurring into each other, offering much the same products. Look at SoFi Money, for example, or at the new Wealthfront savings product, which promises to support bill payment soon. Expect it to have a debit card, too.

Data: Marqeta survey of 1,200 U.S. adults conducted Jan. 16-18, 2019 with a margin of error of ±3 percent; Chart: Naema Ahmed / Axios

The state of play: Most mobile-first banks target millennial customers, on the grounds that they are less wedded to their existing banks and are more likely to constantly be on their phones. But a new survey from Marqeta, a fintech startup backed by Goldman Sachs and Visa, shows that Gen Xers are just as likely to have moved to such a bank, and are just as likely to want to move.

The bottom line: None of these products are particularly revolutionary, except insofar as their users tend not to hate them. If and when winners start to emerge, expect them to be acquired by the major banks, at which point Actually Pleasant Banking might start to become a mass-market phenomenon.

Go deeper: Despite rise of mobile money, millions still outside U.S. bank system

Mobile banking heats up

They're giving the people what they want.

Banking

Fox News Sunday With Chris Wallace-9 07 15 Am - 9 08 01 Am-2019-02-24

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo told "Fox News Sunday" that "there may have to be another summit" after President Trump's upcoming meeting in Vietnam with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un — as it may not accomplish all of Trump's goals. 

The big picture: During another appearance on CNN's "State of the Union," Pompeo told Jake Tapper that North Korea remains a nuclear threat, despite Trump's claim to the contrary immediately after his first summit with Kim last year in Singapore.

Pompeo: "There may have to be another" North Korea summit

He also admitted the country remains a nuclear threat.

North Korea

Conflicts, policies and powers are intersecting and shaping the world. Breaking news and analysis of national security, foreign policy and global crises.

Finish Line

Axios Finish Line

Males, forever the beneficiaries of systems and structures they built to sustain their power, are at the heart of self-inflicted crises in every part of the world.

The big picture: Power corrupts, and societal structures have so far granted men the most power. There are, of course, unscrupulous female leaders. But because there are far fewer of them, the reckoning for men is taking place on a far vaster scale.

The Catholic Church's all-male leadership is mired in a growing, global scandal that includes mass abuse of kids, nuns and parishioners.

After the first year of the #MeToo movement, the N.Y. Times counted 201 powerful men who lost their jobs after public allegations of sexual harassment.

Media saw top CEOs (Harvey Weinstein, Roger Ailes, Les Moonves) and a shameful number of news stars (Matt Lauer, Charlie Rose, Bill O'Reilly) and entertainment stars (Kevin Spacey, Bill Cosby, Louis C.K.) go down after being accused of [Updated] creepy, predatory behavior in some cases — outright sexual abuse and rape in others.

R. Kelly had bond set at $1 million yesterday on charges the R&B singer sexually abused young women for more than a decade.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft was charged in Florida on Friday as part of an investigation into prostitution and human trafficking.

Be smart: Abuse of power is nothing new. Now in the second year of #MeToo, women are feeling more empowered to call men out for abuse and discrimination.

Despite this, the needle hasn’t moved far enough in business, Hollywood and the church. Globally, millions remain voiceless and victims are often discredited.

The female victories in November's midterms look like the first big wave of a generation of women leaders to repair damage from the sins of the men. Despite record wins, women still make up less than a quarter of congressional seats.

A global male leadership crisis

Power corrupts, and societal structures have so far granted men the most power.

Axios

Sunday's top stories