Safe-haven assets such as U.S. Treasuries and gold have rallied while risky assets like stocks and emerging market currencies have lost steam, as jitters surrounding the coronavirus outbreak ripple through markets and fears of a global pandemic grow. “In the last two weeks, there’s been safe-haven buying of U.S. Treasuries significant enough to drive down yields 20 basis points,”
WASHINGTON—As the new coronavirus epidemic continues to spread across China, fears of reduced travel and a global economic slowdown sent oil prices plummeting over the past week. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude fell on Jan. 31, posting a fourth straight week of losses and its worst month since May 2019. In response to threats posed by the deadly virus,
News Analysis Chinese suppliers in coronavirus zones may declare “force majeure” to legally terminate export supply chain deliveries and cause many global factories to begin running out of parts within three weeks, IHS Markit warned. With the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) declaring the potential pandemic spread of the 2019-nCoV form of coronavirus as
The popular messaging service WhatsApp is down for thousands of people across Asia, Europe, and South America. According to Down Detector, there was a spike in users reporting problems using the app on the morning of Sunday, Jan. 19. Around two-thirds of reported issues with WhatsApp was an inability to send or receive messages, while
Commentary Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing standards—also called “sustainable investing” and “socially responsible investing”—have taken on greater importance in the investment community in recent years. Such investing has also reached the shores of China. With this, ESG investing reaches an inflection point. Will the standards have real bite, effecting change at companies, or will
The United States and the Chinese regime on Jan. 15 signed a “phase-one” trade deal, cooling tensions between the world’s two largest economies in an 18-month trade war. Prior to the deal, the United States agreed to cut tariffs to 7.5 percent from 15 percent on about $120 billion of China-made consumer goods, including flat panel televisions, Bluetooth
Commentary The 19-month U.S.–China trade dispute has led to a realignment of global supply chain and exacerbated China’s economic woes. But as a side effect, senior Chinese officials have taken a break from fighting corruption and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leader Xi Jinping has finally changed his idealistic “zero tolerance for corruption” to a more moderate “tolerance
News Analysis China is hitting all-time records for daily crude oil import volumes, just as the military confrontation between the United States and Iran threatens China’s energy supply security. The General Administration of Customs announced that China’s monthly oil imports on a daily basis hit a record 11.13 million barrels per day (bpd) in November,
European stocks were up on Thursday, driven by growing optimism of a resolution to the U.S.-China trade war. The French CAC40 index (.FCHI), a composite of 40 of the 100 biggest market caps on the Euronext Paris exchange, rose by just over 1.3 percent to 6,058.14 points in morning trading. The pan-European STOXX 600 index
Commentary With President Trump in London to discuss the future of NATO, the future of the Eurozone itself is unclear. Germany finds itself rising to a great power position it hasn’t known in almost 65 years. This emerging reality is due in part to a very messy, on-again, off-again Brexit divorce, as well as deteriorating
News Analysis Warning signs are flashing all over China’s banking sector. Chinese regulators have seized or bailed out lenders at an unprecedented pace amid a surge in bad debt, while forcing banks to step up lending at increasingly lower interest spreads. That keeps banks in business, but it’s not a recipe for future longevity. Increasing
President Donald Trump said on Nov. 26 that the United States and China are close to finalizing a phase one trade agreement. “We are in the final throes of a very important deal, I guess you could say one of the most important deals in trade ever,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Nov. 26.
In its latest models of smartphones, Chinese telecom giant Huawei subtly changed references to Taiwan into “Taiwan, China” in users’ contacts list without notifying the Taipei government. The three models—P30, P30 Pro, and Nova 5T—were subsequently banned in Taiwan. The National Communications Commission (NCC), an independent statutory agency of Taiwan’s cabinet, the Executive Yuan, released
News Analysis A new Rand think tank report suggests that Fortune 500 corporations can learn lessons from video game maker Blizzard-Activision’s handling of comments by one of its champion online players in support of Hong Kong protests. Rand suggests corporations are skilled in dealing with international friction such as Mercedes-Benz’s 2018 Dali Lama-inspired advertisement and
A large Chinese peer-to-peer (P2P) lender collapsed just a couple of weeks after seeking final approval to launch an initial public offering (IPO) at the U.S. Nasdaq stock exchange. Tairan, which operates under Xiaotai International Investment, folded after its founder, Pan Baofeng, surrendered himself to police in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province on Nov. 1, saying his
WASHINGTON—The new partial trade deal with Beijing fails to address Chinese subsidies, one of the top concerns of the Trump administration and the impetus for starting a trade war, and it will be difficult to ease U.S.–China tensions if the issue of state subsidies remains unresolved, according to experts. Unfair and trade-distortive government subsidies have
NEWS COMMENTARY As China continues to see its economy decline and foreign exchange reserves shrink, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has announced plans to open up the Chinese financial markets to foreign countries as a way to alleviate an immediate economic crisis and address long term concerns. However, the Western financial firms represented by the
Both U.S. and Chinese officials indicated that they are moving to finalize the “phase one” trade deal on Oct. 30, the same day when Chile announced that it would no longer host a major international summit meeting, during which the deal was due. The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation was scheduled for Nov. 16 to 17 in
WASHINGTON—Whether the United States and China will sign the first part of a trade deal at the APEC meetings in Chile isn’t yet certain, and one obstacle in the ongoing talks is China’s stance on intellectual property. This is one of the most problematic issues in the trade talks, as Beijing wouldn’t “move the needle”
Apple’s CEO Tim Cook recently became the chairman of an advisory board at the business school under China’s prestigious Tsinghua University, as the tech giant faced criticism for caving in to the Chinese regime’s censorship rules owing to its business interests in China. Cook’s role at the board was to make Tsinghua’s School of Economics and Management
