Indonesia's sovereign wealth fund, Danantara, plans to sign a USD 8 billion engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract with US engineering firm KBR Inc. to build 17 modular refineries, according to two sources familiar with the matter and an official presentation by the Economic Ministry, as reported by Reuters. The contract is part of a trade pact reached last week between Indonesia and the US, which resulted in a reduction of proposed US tariffs, from 32% down to 19%. Indonesia's Economic Minister, Airlangga Hartarto, who served as chief negotiator for the deal, revealed...
President Donald Trump cited a softer-than-expected inflation report to again pressure Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell to lower interest rates. "No Inflation, and Prices of Gasoline, Energy, Groceries, and practically everything else, are DOWN!!!" Trump wrote in a social media post. "THE FED must lower the RATE, like Europe and China have done. What is wrong with Too Late Powell?" Trump added that the Fed's strategy was "not fair to America, which is ready to blossom." "Just let it all happen, it will be a beautiful thing!" he continued. The consumer price index...
President Donald Trump said he'll lift US sanctions against Syria following the toppling of former President Bashar al-Assad, a boost to the war-ravaged country's ambitions of rejoining the international community. "I will be ordering the cessation of sanctions against Syria in order to give them a chance at greatness," Trump said in an address to a Saudi-US investment summit in Riyadh on Tuesday. "It's their time to shine." The US leader will go on to briefly meet Syria's new president, Ahmed al-Sharaa, in the Saudi capital on Wednesday, a White House...
United States (US) President Donald Trump hit the airwaves with a fresh round of commentary on a wide range of subjects on Tuesday. President Trump reiterated his intentions to treat trade balance as an imbalance that needs to be rectified in order for a country to reach maximum profitability, and also repeated his intentions to obtain questionably steep 'investment agreements' with individual companies. How these corporations are meant to invest directly in the US, outside of expanding regular operations that market share may not generate profitability from, remains unclear. Donald Trump...
Goldman Sachs has said it now sees a 35% chance of the U.S. entering a recession, down from a prior estimate of 45%, following an agreement between the U.S. and China that sparked hopes for an easing in recently intensifying trade tensions. In a note to clients, the brokerage also lifted its projection for U.S. gross domestic product growth this year by 0.5 percentage points to 1%. On Monday, Washington and Beijing announced that they had reached an agreement that would slash their sky-high respective tariffs on each other and pause the levies for 90 days. U.S. tariffs on China were...
The easing of trade tensions between the United States and China is a step in the right direction and helps reduce European fears of being flooded with Chinese goods redirected from the U.S. market, European Economic Commissioner Valdis Dombrovskis said. Speaking to reporters after a meeting of European Union finance ministers on Tuesday, Dombrovskis noted, however, that the reduction of tariffs after weekend talks in Switzerland was for 90 days and the tariff rates that remained were still high. "Obviously this easing of trade tensions between the U.S. and China is heading in the right...
China's official NBS Manufacturing PMI increased to 49.7 in June 2025 from May's 49.5, matching market expectations while marking the third consecutive month of contraction in factory activity.
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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...
Indonesia's sovereign wealth fund, Danantara, plans to sign a USD 8 billion engineering, procurement, and construction (EPC) contract with US engineering firm KBR Inc. to build 17 modular...