Debt ceiling, Micron China ban, Meta's major fine: Top Stories

The Yahoo Finance Live team break down three things to know, including President Biden and Speaker Kevin McCarthy's meeting regarding the debt ceiling, China's ban of Micron, and Meta's record-breaking fine from the EU.

Video transcript

BRAD SMITH: This is "Yahoo Finance LIVE." I'm Brad Smith alongside Julie Hyman. And here are three things that you need to know to start off your morning.

President Biden returns from the G7 with pressing domestic issues to attend to, striking an agreement with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy over the debt ceiling unsurprisingly at the top of that list. A deal can't come soon enough for all parties.

Though unlikely, an unprecedented debt default is now theoretically just 11 days away. The rhetoric has softened in recent days. McCarthy said a Sunday call with the president was productive, this as high-level talks have been ramping up, albeit without key principal players. Janet Yellen, the Treasury secretary, spoke with "Meet the Press" yesterday, reaffirming her warning the government could run out of money to pay its bills by June 1.

We call it a shot across the bow. China has designated products made by US memory chip giant Micron a national security risk, effectively banning them from key infrastructure projects. Now, it marks the first time Beijing has taken specific action against the US chip maker.

According to the "Wall Street Journal," US Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, quote, "We oppose restrictions that have no basis in fact." it's the latest step in the ongoing tensions between the world's two biggest economies. Micron's shares slumped on the news. But the impact of a ban could be even more significant for the likes of Qualcomm and Broadcom.

And Meta has been fined a record 1.2 billion euro by European privacy regulators for violating the EU's data protection rules. The ruling comes from the Irish Data Protection Commission, and it oversees META's operations in the bloc. It's arguably the biggest move against the social media giant in the years since the EU enacted its landmark data protection regulation, known as GDPR.

The tech giant's battle with EU regulators is nothing new. Competition Commissioner Margrethe Vestager says and has fronted a wide-ranging campaign against the so-called gatekeepers of the internet.