US President Donald Trump announced tariff cuts on fentanyl-related products from China, reducing them from 20% to 10%. This decision is part of an agreement reached at a summit in South Korea last October. This move aims to ease trade tensions between the world's two largest economies. Trump also announced a freeze on reciprocal tariffs imposed on Chinese goods. This freeze will remain in effect, providing some relief to companies engaged in international trade with China. This policy is expected to help ease trade tensions that have persisted for the past few years. This tariff cut will...
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that longer-term interest rates are likely to be higher as the economy changes and policy is in flux. In remarks that focused on the central bank's policy framework review, last done in the summer of 2020, Powell noted that conditions have changed significantly over the past five years. During the period, the Fed witnessed a period of surging inflation, pushing it to historically aggressive interest rate hikes. Powell said that even with longer-term inflation expectations largely in line with the Fed's 2% target, the era of near-zero rates...
Staff from the Trump administration have been hard at work on Thursday, pushing a raft of announcements on a wide range of investment projects with the United Arab Emirates (UAE) that President Trump has been pursuing hard since taking office in January. As is usual for announcements from several faces of the White House team, specific details remain thin, and it remains unclear what kind of timeline these announced projects are expected to take, or how they'll even be accomplished. According to the US Commerce Department, the United Arab Emirates and the US government have agreed on an "AI...
U.S. Federal Reserve officials feel they need to reconsider the key elements around both jobs and inflation in their current approach to monetary policy, given the inflation experience of the last few years and the possibility that supply shocks and the associated price increases may become more frequent in the years ahead, Fed chair Jerome Powell said Thursday. "We may be entering a period of more frequent, and potentially more persistent, supply shocks—a difficult challenge for the economy and for central banks," Powell said in opening remarks at a two-day conference reconsidering the...
US producer prices fell by 0.5% in April 2025, following a revised flat reading in March and defying market expectations of a 0.2% increase. This was the first decline in the PPI since October 2023 and the sharpest drop since April 2020, during the early aftermath of the COVID-19 outbreak. The decline was largely driven by a 0.7% fall in service costs, the largest since data collection began in December 2009, primarily due to a 1.6% decrease in margins for trade services, suggesting businesses may be absorbing some of the impact from higher tariffs. Prices for final demand services...
US retail sales rose by 0.1% mom in April 2025, following an upwardly revised 1.7% surge in March. The modest gain suggests consumers scaled back spending in response to a wave of tariff announcements in early April, yet the result still exceeded market expectations for no change. Biggest increases were seen in sales at food services and drinking places (1.2%), building material and garden equipment supplies dealers (0.8%), furniture (0.3%) and electronics and appliances stores (0.3%). On the other hand, the largest decreases were recorded at sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument,...
Asia-Pacific markets traded higher, tracking Wall Street gains overnight.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 rose 0.41% after hitting a fresh record high on Thursday, while the Topix added 0.61%. South...
Both the STOXX 50 and STOXX 600 hovered around the flatline on Friday, as investors adopted a cautious stance ahead of further developments in trade talks between US President Trump and Chinese...
US President Donald Trump announced tariff cuts on fentanyl-related products from China, reducing them from 20% to 10%. This decision is part of an agreement reached at a summit in South Korea last...