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Bloomberg As an opposition lawmaker in Canada’s parliament seven years ago, Justin Trudeau criticized former Prime Minister Stephen Harper for making government “totally absent from the defining issues of our time.” In his first budget as prime minister released on Tuesday, Trudeau put the federal government back at the center of the nation’s economy with almost C$120 billion ($92 billion) ...

Bloomberg The Treasury market is signaling inflation expectations are rising, and one metric shows traders anticipate cost increases will reach Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen’s 2 percent target. The difference between yields on one-year U.S. government securities and same-maturity Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, a gauge of trader expectations for consumer prices over the life of the debt, climbed to 2.11 ...

Bloomberg The European Union is buying more sunflower seeds from Argentina, the world’s fourth-largest producer, as a cut in export taxes and a weaker peso make imports cheaper. Shipments into the EU may be up to 10 times bigger in the 2015-16 season ending in July compared to a year earlier, said Veysel Kaya, founder of brokerage and consultancy Sunseedman ...

Bloomberg Brazil’s inflation slowed more than all analysts forecast in the month through mid-March as joblessness rises and the economy heads toward its second straight year of contraction. Inflation as measured by the IPCA-15 index decelerated to 0.43 percent from 1.42 percent a month earlier, the national statistics agency said on Wednesday. That compares with the median estimate from 37 ...

Bloomberg Barack Obama will be the first U.S. president to visit Argentina in more than a decade as his counterpart Mauricio Macri seeks a rapprochement with the international community following a decade of financial and diplomatic isolation. Obama, arriving from an historic state visit to Cuba, will meet with Macri and is scheduled to attend a business forum in Buenos ...

BEIJING / Reuters China’s campaign to slim down its bloated industries could be derailed by more than $1.5 trillion of debt in its steel, coal, cement and non-ferrous metal sectors, which threatens to overwhelm local banks. Tackling industrial overcapacity has become a priority for Beijing to make its slowing economy more efficient and address a supply glut that has hammered ...

SHANGHAI / Reuters The World Bank has approved a $500 million loan to China to support financing of projects to help control air pollution in and around Beijing. The money is part of a broader programme expected to reach $1.4 billion for “green financing” over the next six years that includes another half billion dollars from Hua Xia Bank Co ...

TOKYO / Reuters Japan’s government lowered its assessment of the economy in March for the first time in five months due to weakness in consumer spending, a move likely to reinforce views that more fiscal stimulus will be needed to keep the economy growing. Some of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s advisers and prominent overseas economists have been calling for Japan ...

Kuala Lumpur / DPA The growth prospects of Asean major export-orientated economies of Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand are expected to remain weaker than its domestic demand-driven economies, says Moody’s Investors Service. The international ratings agency said that hence growth outlook of Asean economies was likely to diverge in 2016 and 2017, against the backdrop of subdued global demand. A Moody’s ...

New Delhi / Bloomberg Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi risks a political backlash among the middle class as he seeks to coax banks into lowering interest rates. Criticism is growing against his government’s move last week to slash interest rates on small savings programs used by as much as a third of India’s 1.3 billion people. Banks have long cited ...