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Investors wait for Trump's tax bill to see if it will affect the stock market and dollar.

The dollar fell to multi-year lows and global shares dropped on Tuesday. It had just finished its worst half-year performance since 1970, and was ahead of the vote on President Donald Trump’s tax-cutting and spending legislation.

The previous day, optimism about trade helped global share markets reach an intraday high. The Senate debate over Trump's proposed bill, which is estimated to add $3.3 billion to the United States debt pile, weighed down on sentiment.

The European share market, which had a gain of 6.5% on a year-to date basis at the end of June, was down by 0.4% for the day.

The tax-cutting and spending bill was expected to be voted on during Tuesday's Asian trading session, but the debate continued over the long list of amendments proposed by Republicans and minority Democrats.

Trump wants to pass the bill before the Independence Day holiday on July 4. Investors are also looking forward to Thursday's key U.S. employment data as global trade negotiators rush to reach agreements before Trump's deadlines.

Ray Attrill is the head of FX Strategy at National Australia Bank.

He said on NAB's The Morning Call Podcast that the payroll data due later this week would "have a significant impact, I believe, on the sentiment regarding the timing of Fed rate reductions".

POLITICAL DRAMA

Futures for the S&P 500 index and Nasdaq fell 0.2%, indicating a slight pullback in the opening of trading later. Tesla shares fell 5% or more in pre-market trade after Trump suggested that the government's efficiency department review the subsidies provided to CEO Elon Musk's companies.

Musk criticised Trump's proposed budget and social media exchanges between the two began to devolve into personal attacks as of early June.

This political drama, which could be a resurgence of the bear story just as shares are starting to recover, said Matt Britzman. Senior equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.

Tesla is still among the top 10 most valuable Wall Street companies, but its value has dropped by around a third since December, when it reached a record-high.

Nvidia, another heavyweight, is also on its way to becoming the most valuable business in history. It's market capitalisation is approaching $4 trillion. In pre-market trading, the chipmaker's stock was down slightly.

The Bank of Japan’s tankan business sentiment index and a Chinese measure of factory activity showed that the largest economies in the area were likely to weather the tariff storm at least for the moment.

Japan's manufacturing sector also grew for the first time since more than a month, but a significant drop in demand underscored the difficult trade outlook for Asia’s export-dependent economies.

The dollar was weaker against the Japanese currency dropping by 0.8% to 143yen. Its value against the Euro was also little changed at $1.18. This is its lowest level since September 2021.

In the first half of this year, the U.S. dollar lost more than 10 percent of its value against six other currencies. This is the worst performance it has had in at least fifty years.

Brent crude futures rose 0.7% to $67.22 a barrel on the same day, reversing a previous decline. This was due to expectations that OPEC+ would increase their output in August. Gold spot rose by nearly 1.5%, to $3352 per ounce.

(source: Reuters)