分类： business

A high-stakes legal dispute has erupted in the cryptocurrency space, as crypto billionaire Justin Sun has filed a federal lawsuit against World Liberty Financial (WLFI), the crypto venture co-founded by U.S. President Donald Trump and his son Eric Trump. Sun, one of the project’s largest early backers and a long-time public supporter of Trump’s crypto-friendly policies, accuses the venture of running an illegal scheme to improperly seize his stake in the company.

In his complaint filed Tuesday in San Francisco federal court, Sun details a series of damaging actions WLFI leadership has taken against his holdings. The crypto entrepreneur, founder of the multi-billion dollar TRON blockchain project, alleges that unnamed individuals tied to the company – including co-founder Chase Herro – have frozen all of his WLFI tokens, revoked his governance voting rights, and threatened to permanently destroy his holdings by “burning” them, all without any formal justification. Sun claims this action is inconsistent with the pro-crypto values Donald Trump has publicly promoted, framing the current leadership’s actions as an exploitative fraud leveraging the Trump family name for private gain.

Sun’s initial investment in World Liberty dates back to the project’s early days, when he poured $45 million into the venture. At its peak, his holdings of WLFI tokens were valued at more than $1 billion. He also demonstrated his broader support for Trump-aligned crypto projects by purchasing $100 million worth of Trump-branded meme coins in July 2025. Like many crypto assets, WLFI has seen a steep market decline since last September: its per-token price has plummeted from 31 cents to less than 8 cents, eroding billions in total market value and leaving many smaller investors concerned about the project’s trajectory.

In his legal filing, Sun also pushes back on the project’s original promises to investors. He argues that initial commitments to allow all token holders to trade their assets on public markets were deliberately false and misleading. While most WLFI tokens were unlocked for public trading earlier this year, Sun says the company has specifically blocked him from selling even a single one of his tokens, leaving his nine-figure investment effectively worthless.

World Liberty has swiftly rejected all of Sun’s allegations, pushing back against his claims by accusing him of manufacturing a victim narrative to distract from his own alleged misconduct. The company has not yet released further details about what misconduct it claims Sun engaged in.

Beyond the immediate legal fight, the dispute has also sparked broader political and regulatory questions. Just weeks before the lawsuit was filed, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) announced it was dropping a years-long investigation into Sun. The entrepreneur had previously faced allegations that he paid high-profile social media influencers to promote his crypto projects without disclosing these paid partnerships, a violation of U.S. securities disclosure rules. Top Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren has publicly questioned whether the SEC’s decision to close the investigation was tied to Sun’s massive investments in Trump-linked crypto ventures, raising new ethics concerns about regulatory independence.

The BBC has reached out to both Donald Trump and World Liberty Financial for additional comment on the lawsuit, but has not yet received a response as of press time. Investors are also growing increasingly wary of World Liberty’s financial practices, particularly the company’s strategy of taking out large loans secured by the value of its own tokens, a move that many analysts say carries significant downsize risk if token prices continue to slide.

A month-long ongoing conflict in Iran has sent shockwaves through global energy markets, and the ripple effects have pushed U.S. retail sales to a surprisingly sharp gain in March — a jump that economists warn hides serious pain for American consumers, according to fresh data from the U.S. Department of Commerce released Tuesday.

The official data shows that overall national retail sales climbed 1.7% month-over-month in March, with the entire gain driven by an unprecedented surge in gas station sales. Fuel sales skyrocketed 15.5% last month, marking the steepest single-month increase since the federal government began tracking this retail category in 1992.

While solid retail sales growth is typically interpreted as a sign of a strong, expanding economy, this particular spike is tied entirely to inflated energy costs triggered by the Iran conflict, which broke out on February 28. The fighting has severely disrupted commercial shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the critical global chokepoint through which approximately 20% of the world’s daily oil supplies pass. The supply disruption has sent global crude prices soaring, passing through directly to pump prices for U.S. consumers.

For most American households, which rely heavily on personal passenger vehicles for daily commuting and everyday travel, sustained high energy prices are eroding disposable incomes that would otherwise go toward non-energy spending. Economists warn that if the conflict drags on, further energy price hikes could drag overall consumer spending into contraction, a major headwind for the world’s largest economy.

“If the situation with Iran is not resolved quickly, oil and gas prices will rise further,” Dean Baker, co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, told Xinhua News Agency. “This will seriously dampen consumer spending, if not actually push it into negative territory.”

Top U.S. energy officials have already signaled that elevated prices could persist for months. U.S. Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNN’s *State of the Union* on Sunday that average U.S. gasoline prices may not drop back below $3 per gallon until 2027, as the conflict continues to roil global energy markets. “I don’t know, that could happen later this year, that might not happen until next year, but prices have likely peaked,” Wright said, adding that energy prices would almost certainly decline if a diplomatic resolution to the conflict is reached.

Parallel to the energy market volatility, diplomatic efforts to end the conflict hit a snag this week. On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump announced he would extend a temporary two-week ceasefire with the Islamic Republic of Iran, claiming the Iranian government remains “seriously fractured” internally. The ceasefire was originally set to expire Wednesday, and Trump said the pause in hostilities will remain in place until Tehran presents a “unified proposal” to end full-scale fighting.

The president’s announcement comes on the heels of multiple setbacks for peace talks. A scheduled second round of peace negotiations that was to be led by U.S. Vice President JD Vance in Pakistan has been postponed. Separately, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim News Agency reported this week that Iranian negotiators have informed the U.S. government via an intermediary that they will not participate in any further talks at this time. The United Nations has nonetheless publicly voiced hope that talks will resume in the near future.

As of Tuesday, data from the American Automobile Association puts the national average U.S. gas price at roughly $4 per gallon — a full dollar higher than the average price recorded at the same time in 2025. Global benchmark crude prices have also surged, hovering above $90 per barrel on Tuesday, up sharply from the pre-conflict average of around $65 per barrel recorded before fighting began in late February.

After years of trailing Brazil as the top corn supplier to China, the United States has clawed back lost market share in the world’s largest agricultural commodities market, marking a much-needed win for American growers navigating ongoing financial headwinds, according to a new analysis from Breakwave Advisors.

The New York-based commodity trading advisor drew on shipping and trade data from the Signal Ocean Platform to track recent export flows. The analysis confirmed that while Brazil dominated Chinese corn imports throughout 2025, the United States overtook its South American rival to claim the top supplier position by the end of late March. This reversal in market standing aligns with on-the-ground observations from agricultural economists, who note US corn shipments have been unusually strong across the opening weeks of the year.

William W. Wilson, an agribusiness and applied economics professor at North Dakota State University, told China Daily two key global trends are driving the unexpected uptick in demand. “Number one, we’re seeing pretty robust overall demand in the international marketplace, and on top of that, international demand for corn for biofuel production has grown substantially,” Wilson explained.

International exports have long been a backbone of the US corn industry, with regional trade pacts underpinning decades of steady growth. USDA data shows Mexico, Japan, South Korea and Colombia collectively purchase two-thirds of all US corn exports, with Mexico alone absorbing 40 percent of total outbound shipments. The United States also sends 35 percent of its total ethanol exports to northern neighbor Canada, with the entire North American trade relationship governed by the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), which entered into force on July 1, 2020. The three partner nations are scheduled to hold a joint review of the deal in July ahead of a planned 16-year extension.

For the broader US economy, the corn sector is an underrecognized engine of growth and employment. Industry group the National Corn Growers Association, which advocates for reduced trade barriers and expanded global market access for American producers, reports that corn farming generated more than $151 billion in total national economic output in 2023, while directly and indirectly supporting at least 600,000 domestic jobs. USDA figures add that nearly a third of all income for US corn producers comes from export sales, highlighting how critical foreign market access is to the sector’s long-term stability.

That importance is reflected in the USDA’s latest 2025-26 marketing year projections, released in April, which forecast total US corn exports will reach approximately 3.3 billion bushels (116 million cubic meters) – an all-time record for the industry.

Veteran agricultural experts emphasize that consistent, predictable access to global markets is the single most important factor supporting American corn growers’ long-term prosperity. Bob Nielsen, an emeritus agronomy professor at Purdue University who grew up on a corn farm in Nebraska and has spent more than four decades studying corn crop management, stressed that stable trade relationships remove much of the uncertainty that plagues farming operations.

“The more that we can maintain good trade relations with major markets like China and Mexico, and stabilize export demand to keep it consistent year in and year out, the better off US farmers will be,” Nielsen said. He added that farming is inherently a volatile business, with growers constantly at the mercy of shifting global market demands for corn, which is used for everything from human consumption to biofuel production and animal feed. “That uncertainty has always been the core frustration and biggest challenge for corn growers across the country,” he noted.

In response to the shifting market dynamics, US farm groups and corn producers have called on the Trump administration to prioritize agricultural trade issues during President Donald Trump’s upcoming visit to China. While the recent gain in Chinese market share is a positive development, analysts warn that the US corn sector still faces significant headwinds that could erode competitiveness. Tariffs on agricultural goods and intensifying global competition from rival producing nations continue to raise operational costs and put pressure on American export prices.

Wilson noted that the United States faces intense competition from other major corn exporting nations, specifically pointing to Brazil, Ukraine and Argentina as key rivals. “For our growers, getting trade policy sorted out to make sure we aren’t put at an unfair disadvantage is absolutely critical right now as we work to hold onto these recent market gains,” he said.