Renewed tensions between the United States and Russia have resurfaced following an incident involving an oil tanker, sparking market concerns about potential disruptions to global energy supplies. Washington's move, associated with tightening oversight and enforcement of sanctions on Russian oil shipments, is viewed by Moscow as provocative and could worsen relations between the two countries. Russia views these actions as an attempt by the United States to suppress Russian energy exports and strengthen its dominance in the global oil market. Meanwhile, Washington argues that these measures...
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,...
Private business in the US added 62k workers to their payrolls in April of 2025, less than half of the downwardly revised 147k payrolls in the previous month and well below market expectations of 115k. It was the softest increase since July of last year, underscoring the impact of tariffs by the US government on businesses' intake of new labor. New employment rose by 34k in service providing industries, with increase in trade/transportation/utilities (21K) and financial activities (20K) offsetting the sharp declines in education/health services (-23K), and information (-8K). In turn,...
China has created a list of U.S.-made products that would be exempted from its 125% tariffs and is quietly notifying companies about the policy, two people familiar with the matter said, as Beijing seeks to ease the impact of its trade war with Washington. China has already granted tariff exemptions on select products including select pharmaceuticals, microchips and aircraft engines and was asking firms to identify critical goods they need levy-free, Reuters reported on Friday. However, the existence of a so-called 'whitelist' had not been previously reported. The quiet approach allows...
Asian stock markets fell in unison on Thursday, following Wall Street's decline. A brief rally in tech stocks led by Nvidia quickly faded, prompting investors to turn away from riskier assets like...
European stock indices closed marginally lower on Wednesday as equities took a breather from their recent strong momentum, while investors continued to assess the outlook for the ECB's policy this...
The upcoming Supreme Court ruling on the legality of President Donald Trump's massive tariffs, which rocked markets in April, is one of the next major tests for US stocks and bonds.
Equity markets...