U.S. stock markets are becoming inured to tariff shocks. But new global trade deals are being drawn up in the face of the Trump administration's "America first" doctrine, and investors should pay attention to the resulting scramble for commodities.

Traditional American allies are getting used to tongue lashings from the White House. The latest target is South Korea, which President Donald Trump said he would hit with 25% tariffs -- up from 15% previously -- due to a delay in approving a preliminary trade pact. That comes days after the president threatened 100% tariffs on Canada if the country makes a trade deal with China.

Stock markets can largely brush off such announcements as negotiating tactics, especially if the Supreme Court rules against the legality of Trump's tariffs in a decision widely expected next month. But other nations are responding to a more fractured world order. India and the European Union said Tuesday they had reached a free-trade agreement, which European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen explicitly framed as a triumph of "rules-based cooperation" in a rebuke to Trump.

Gold has been the headline beneficiary of the delicate geopolitical situation. But other commodities are also on the rise, as the possibility of trade wars -- or even real wars -- leads to stockpiling of resources. Copper, for example, is in high demand, with U.S. prices up 41% last year and the metal being the key prize in a potential merger between mining giants Rio Tinto and Glencore. Aluminum has been less heralded but is a potential copper substitute for electrification, and analysts at UBS expect demand growth of between 2.5% and 3.0% in 2026 and 3.5% in 2027, outrunning annual supply growth of 2% over the same period.

Governments are rediscovering the importance of access to commodities in the face of Trump's tariff shocks. Investors can benefit from the same lesson.

-- Adam Clark

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BlackRock's Rieder Surges. Is He Trump's Goldilocks Fed Pick?

Two weeks ago Rick Rieder was considered an outlier in the race to become Federal Reserve chair. Now prediction markets name him as most likely successor to Jerome Powell. His views have aligned with President Donald Trump's repeated calls for lower rates, making him a potential Goldilocks pick.

   -- Rieder, a longtime BlackRock executive, is one of four finalists whom 
      Trump is considering. The others are former Fed governor Kevin Warsh, 
      current Fed governor Christopher Waller, and Kevin Hassett, director of 
      the National Economic Council, though Trump recently said he wants to 
      keep Hassett at the White House. 
 
   -- Trump praised Rieder, who oversees roughly $2.7 trillion in client assets, 
      as "very impressive" after interviewing him earlier this month. Rieder 
      has said explicitly that interest rates should be lower. His focus on the 
      real-world implications of monetary policy also plays squarely into the 
      Trump administration's focus on affordability. 
 
   -- As chief investment officer of global fixed income, Rieder runs one of 
      BlackRock's most important businesses. He also sits on its top leadership 
      committee, alongside CEO Larry Fink. And he is a frequent presence on 
      financial television, where he has spent years discussing interest rates, 
      inflation, housing, and market volatility. 
 
   -- Rieder has said that the Fed is placing too much weight on inflation data 
      that reflect past conditions and too little on how the economy is 
      changing, including productivity gains from artificial intelligence, 
      automation, and logistics. Policy decisions, in his view, are affecting 
      the economy with long lags. 

What's Next: As of Monday afternoon, Rieder's odds of winning the nomination were 43.5%, according to Polymarket (which has a data partnership with Dow Jones, publisher of Barron's). Warsh's chances stood at 29%, Waller's at 9.2% and Hassett's, at 7.2%. An announcement could come this week.

-- Nicole Goodkind and Rebecca Ungarino

***

Healthcare Stocks Plunge After Medicare Rates Blow

Health-insurance stocks were falling on Tuesday after the Trump administration proposed to keep Medicare rates roughly flat next year.

   -- The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services $(CMS)$ said late Monday 
      that payments to private Medicare Advantage plans would rise by 0.09% on 
      average in 2027, way below what analysts had been expecting. 
 
   -- The proposed increase is worth about $700 million for health insurers. By 
      contrast, the rate increase of 5.06% for the current year is expected to 
      net them more than $25 billion in extra revenue. 
 
   -- The payment rate ultimately dictates how much insurers can charge for 
      monthly premiums and, by extension, their profits. 
 
   -- Shares in UnitedHealth tumbled ahead of the open and extended losses 
      after its earningsprovided further disappointment for investors. CVS 
      Health and Humana were also sharply lower. 

What's Next: CMS said it may also overturn a separate money-making billing procedure -- part of that plan would be aimed at improving the accuracy of payments to ensure Medicare insurers are adequately compensated.

-- George Glover and Alex Kozul-Wright

***

One Year Since DeepSeek Shock, China Rises as AI Rival

A year after Chinese artificial intelligence lab's "DeepSeek moment" triggered a $1 trillion market panic and fears that U.S. companies were losing their AI lead, China is threatening to capture more of the AI trade this year, thanks to its open-source approach, greater power resources, and Nvidia's advanced chips.

   -- China's open-source models and access to almost unlimited cheap power, 
      make it a formidable competitor, according to Christopher Woods, 
      Jefferies' global head of equity strategy. He said last year's DeepSeek 
      moment remains highly relevant, even though the U.S. stock market seems 
      to have forgotten about it. 
 
   -- Google's Gemini, Anthropic's Claude, or OpenAI's GPT lead in complex 
      reasoning, but the Chinese open-source strategy of letting users suggest 
      improvements accelerates development and can compensate for not being 
      able to compete directly with OpenAI or Anthropic, said Kyle Miller at 
      Georgetown's Center for Security and Emerging Technology. 
 
   -- DeepSeek has outlined a method of training larger models using fewer 
      chips through a more efficient memory design and could release its next 
      flagship model next month. UBS analyst Timothy Arcuri said DeepSeek's 
      promising engineering solution could enable continued model scaling 
      without a proportional increase in GPU capacity. 
 
   -- President Trump's plan to let Nvidia sell its advanced H200 chips to 
      China could enable Chinese labs to build AI-training supercomputers as 
      capable as American ones at comparable costs, with subsidies by the 
      Chinese government, according to the Institute for Progress. 

What's Next: The possibility of a cheaper, more capable Chinese AI ecosystem is emerging just as OpenAI and Anthropic consider public listings and U.S. hyperscalers such as Microsoft and Meta Platforms face pressure to justify heavy spending, raising the threat that Chinese companies could undercut American rivals.

-- Adam Clark and Janet H. Cho

***

Polymarket Scores Another Deal In Prediction-Site Sports Battle

Polymarket has landed a deal with the commercial arm of Major League Soccer in the high-profile competition between the prediction markets for sports and corporate partners. It's going to be the exclusive prediction market for the U.S. and Canada's largest soccer league and its North American tournament, the Leagues Cup.

   -- Sports are big business for Polymarket and its competitor Kalshi. Event 
      contracts sold on prediction markets can be built around everything from 
      a game's outcome to how many points a player will score, as with a 
      typical sportsbook. Polymarket has a data partnership with Dow Jones, the 
      publisher of Barron's. 
 
   -- Similar partnerships with other sports leagues have involved integrating 
      live prediction-market odds into coverage of televised games and 
      displaying odds throughout the stadium, which change in real time as 
      games progress. 
 
   -- Last year, 89% of Kalshi's trading fee revenue was tied to sports 
      contracts. Polymarket last month saw $1.94 billion in sports trading 
      volume, according to data aggregator Dune, of which about $381 million 
      was traded on soccer. 
 
   -- They also battle on other fronts. Kalshi and Polymarket each let users 
      bet on how much snow New York would get by Monday. More than 17,000 
      traders, including "weathersharps" who specialize in climate-related bets, 
      had bet a record $5.1 million on Kalshi's market as of Monday afternoon. 

What's Next: Unlike Kalshi and sportsbooks, Polymarket still isn't widely available to American bettors in the U.S. Its app is in a testing phase, with users facing a long wait list before they can sign up and start trading. The MLS season kicks off on Feb. 21.

-- Nick Devor and Janet H. Cho

***

'Big Short' Michael Burry Is Buying GameStop Shares Again

Nearly five years to the day when GameStop's stock reached its January 2021 peak, an old fan has re-emerged. Michael Burry, the investor who famously bet against the housing market ahead of the subprime mortgage crisis, said in a post on Substack that he has recently been purchasing GameStop shares.

   -- GameStop stock rallied as much as 8% Monday after Burry's post. His 
      thesis rests on CEO Ryan Cohen and his ability to deploy the cash 
      GameStop amassed by selling shares after the meme-stock rally. Burry 
      missed that rally after selling an earlier stake in the fourth quarter 
      2020. 
 
   -- Burry compares Cohen to Warren Buffett, who transformed Berkshire 
      Hathaway from a dying textile firm to a conglomerate by using cash to 
      invest in other businesses. GameStop has slashed its store count, and 
      after struggling for years, it has been profitable on a GAAP basis for 
      six consecutive quarters. 
 
   -- Cohen told Barron's in December that the Berkshire comparison is a high 
      bar and says Buffett himself likely wouldn't have expected Berkshire to 
      evolve as it did. But taking a business lacking the best growth prospects 
      and navigating it to other investments? "That's GameStop," Cohen said. 
 
   -- Until recently, Cohen wasn't taking a salary as CEO. But shareholders 
      will vote in March or April on a plan to award him performance-based 
      stock option awards reminiscent of Tesla CEO Elon Musk's ambitious pay 
      package, assuming GameStop reaches some performance targets. 

What's Next: Cohen has recently been buying GameStop shares on the open market. Last week, he bought one million shares for roughly $21.4 million.

-- Connor Smith

***

-- Newsletter edited by Liz Moyer, Patrick O'Donnell, Callum Keown

This content was created by Barron's, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. Barron's is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

January 27, 2026 07:09 ET (12:09 GMT)

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