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...
Applications for US unemployment benefits jumped to the highest level since February during the week that followed Easter. Initial claims increased by 18,000 to 241,000 in the week ended April 26, according to Labor Department data released Thursday. The median forecast in a Bloomberg survey of economists called for 223,000 applications. Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, rose to 1.92 million in the week ended April 19, the highest since 2021. That exceeds economists' forecasts. Source: Bloomberg
Ukraine and the U.S. on Wednesday signed a deal heavily promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump that will give the United States preferential access to new Ukrainian minerals deals and fund investment in Ukraine's reconstruction. The two countries signed the accord in Washington after months of sometimes fraught negotiations, with uncertainty persisting until the last moment with word of an eleventh-hour snag. The accord establishes a joint investment fund for Ukraine's reconstruction as Trump tries to secure a peace settlement in Russia's three-year-old war in Ukraine. The agreement is...
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration reached out to China to initiate talks over a bitter tariff exchange between the two countries, a state-run Chinese media outlet reported on Wednesday. U.S. officials had reached out to China through various channels with the intent of negotiating on tariff issues, according to a post by Yuyuantantian, a Weibo (NASDAQ:WB) account affiliated with state broadcaster China Central Television. The report comes amid heightened speculation over U.S.-China trade talks, with Washington and Beijing offering contrasting views on negotiations. Trump claimed...
Price increases subsided in March, going by the Federal Reserve's preferred metric, bringing annualized inflation closer to the central bank's target in the month before the brunt of President Trump's new tariffs took effect. The personal-consumption-expenditures price index was flat last month, the Commerce Department said Wednesday. After stripping out variable food and energy costs, core prices also were flat. Analysts polled by The Wall Street Journal thought prices would be flat month over month, or up 0.1% on the core reading. The cooler price increases pulled the 12-month PCE...
The U.S. economy contracted at an annualized rate of 0.3% in the first quarter of 2025, marking the first decline since the first quarter of 2022. This was a sharp reversal from 2.4% growth in the previous quarter and came in below market expectations of 0.3% growth, according to an advance estimate. A 41.3% surge in imports contributed to the slowdown, as businesses and consumers rushed to stockpile goods in anticipation of higher costs following a series of tariff announcements by the Trump administration. Consumer spending growth also cooled to 1.8%, the slowest pace since Q2 2023,...
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...