10 things you need to know in markets, Wednesday, October 3

Good morning! Here’s what you need to know in markets on
Wednesday.

Trump
holds an example of what a new tax form may look like during a
meeting on tax policy with Republican lawmakers in
November.

Evan
Vucci/AP

1. The dollar stood near a
one-month high against its peers on Wednesday as concerns as
political wrangling over Italy’s budget plan rattled market
sentiment and weighed on the euro. 
Investors
remained jittery even as a new U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement
appeared to ease global trade tensions. The Dow gained 0.5
percent to close at a
fresh record high. China’s financial markets are closed for
the National Day holiday and will resume trade on Oct. 8.

2. The New York Times
reported in an extensive investigation published Tuesday
that President Donald Trump engaged in what it described as
“dubious tax schemes” in the 1990s.  The “schemes”
mentioned even included “instances of outright fraud” that
enhanced the fortune that his parents — mainly his father —
passed on to him. What
The Times reported runs counter to Trump’s oft-repeated
narrative: that he is a self-made billionaire who built his own
empire.

3. A
federal judge has ruled that Tesla must defend itself at a
trial over allegations it knew foreign workers at one of its
facilities were threatened with deportation if they reported an
injury and worked long shifts that violated forced labor
laws. US District Judge Lucy Koh, in San Jose,
California, rejected on Monday Tesla’s request for an early
dismissal of the lawsuit, paving the way for the plaintiffs to
seek documents and witnesses to build their case.

4. The CEO of a Vancouver-based company
pleaded guilty on Tuesday to facilitating international
narcotics traffic by supplying drug cartels with encrypted
communications devices. Secure communications
devices supplied by Vincent Ramos, CEO of Phantom Secure, and
four co-conspirators helped traffickers distribute cocaine,
heroin and methamphetamine in the United States, Australia,
Mexico, Canada, Thailand and Europe, the US Justice Department
said in a statement.

5. China’s hopes of negotiating a free trade pact with
Canada or Mexico
were dealt a sharp setback by a provision deep in the new
U.S.-Mexico-Canada trade agreement that aims to forbid such deals
with “non-market” countries, trade experts said on
Tuesday. The provision specifies that if one of the
current North American Free Trade Agreement partners enters a
free trade deal with a “non-market” country such as China, the
others can quit in six months and form their own bilateral trade
pact.

6. The US is expected to announce in the coming days that
it will use
offensive and defensive cyber capabilities on behalf of NATO if
asked, a senior Pentagon official said, amid concerns about
Russia’s increasingly assertive use of its cyber
capabilities. The 29-nation NATO alliance
recognized cyber as a domain of warfare, along with
land, air and sea, in 2014, but has not outlined in detail what
that entails.

7. Hilton Worldwide Holdings
plans to more than double its hotels in Africa in the next
five years by mainly striking deals with existing hotels for
conversion into its brand, its chief executive
said. International chains, including Marriott
International and Hyatt Hotels, have been increasing their
investments in Africa, which has some of the world’s fastest
growing economies and a rising middle class.

8. Several people with information related to allegations
of sexual misconduct against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett
Kavanaugh
say they have tried in vain to speak with the FBI, which is
expected to wrap up its investigation this
week. Under pressure, U.S. President Donald Trump
ordered the FBI investigation following a dramatic Senate hearing
last week in which university professor Christine Blasey Ford
detailed a sexual assault she says was carried out by Kavanaugh
and his friend, Mark Judge, at a high school party in 1982.

9. A Texas woman, claiming that she was raped, beaten and
sex trafficked at the age of 15 by a pimp who posed as a Facebook
“friend,”
has filed suit against the social network, alleging its
executives knew minors were being lured into the sex trade on
their platform. The woman, identified only as Jane
Doe in court papers filed in Harris County District Court in
Houston on Monday, also named as defendants the now-shuttered
classified ads website Backpage.com and its founders.

10.
Tropical storm Leslie is likely to strengthen to a hurricane
on Wednesday. The storm is generating swells that will
continue to affect portions of the southeastern coast of the
United States, Bermuda and the Bahamas, the U.S. National
Hurricane Center said.