No country should bypass international laws to authorise resource exploration in the seabed, China's foreign ministry said on Monday, following a report of U.S. plans to stockpile deep-sea metals to counter China's dominance in the sector. The Trump administration is drafting an executive order to enable stockpiling of deep-sea metals found on the Pacific Ocean seabed to counter China's dominance of battery minerals and rare earth supply chains, the Financial Times reported on Saturday, citing people familiar with the matter. The stockpile would "create large quantities ready and available...
UK retail sales rose by 0.9% on a like-for-like basis in March 2025, outpacing market forecasts of a 0.5% increase. The boost was largely driven by unseasonably warm weather, which spurred spending on gardening, DIY, food, and health and beauty products. Mother's Day also contributed to the uplift, though the late timing of Easter this year somewhat distorted year-on-year comparisons. Food sales grew by 1.6% in March, while non-food sales saw a modest 0.6% increase. Helen Dickinson, Chief Executive of the British Retail Consortium, commented: "Despite a challenging global geopolitical...
Indonesia's economy grew 0.53% qoq in Q4 of 2024, compared with market consensus of 0.56% and after a 1.5% increase in Q3. It was the third straight quarterly growth but the softest in the sequence, amid a sharp slowdown in fixed investment (2.44% vs 8.35% in Q3). Meanwhile, private consumption recovered (1.64% vs -0.48%), boosted by spending related to year-end, as did government expenditure (38.58% vs -1.17%). On the trade front, exports (4.63% vs 7.78%) and imports (3.23% vs 9.37%) slowed, on weaker demand both globally and domestically. Production-wise, activity slowed for mining (3.25%...
As China imposes export controls on rare earth elements, the U.S. would be unable to fill a potential shortfall, according to the Center for Strategic and International Studies — and this could threaten Washington's military capabilities. Amid U.S. President Donald Trump's escalating tariffs on China, Beijing earlier this month imposed export restrictions on seven rare earth elements and magnets used in defense, energy and automotive technologies. The new restrictions — which encompass the medium and heavy rare earth elements samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium...
The Trump administration is planning to use ongoing tariff negotiations to pressure U.S. trading partners to limit their transactions with China, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing people familiar with the discussions. The report added that the Trump administration wants to use negotiations with more than 70 countries to get them to ban China from shipping products through their countries and to bar Chinese companies from setting up business there to avoid U.S. tariffs. (Newsmaker) Source: FXstreet