Beijing / AFP China’s economy, the world’s second largest, struggled in July with a worse-than-expected trade performance as imports plunged 12.5 percent year-on-year, Customs said. Imports fell to $132.4 billion, data showed, as weaker global commodity prices and lacklustre domestic demand weighed on purchases. The drop in imports was significantly larger than expectations for a 7.0 percent fall, the ...

  Bloomberg South Korea’s credit rating was increased one level by Standard & Poor’s, which cited the nation’s steady economic performance, sound fiscal position and flexible fiscal and monetary policies for the improvement. S&P said it raised the long-term credit rating for South Korea to AA from AA- with a stable outlook, the agency’s third-highest rating. This follows an upgrade ...

  Bloomberg There’s a river of steel flooding from China despite the best efforts of governments around the world to dam the flow from the top producer, with data on Monday showing that overseas shipments held above 10 million tons in July. Sales increased 5.8 percent on-year to 10.3 million metric tons last month, compared with 10.9 million tons in ...

  BLOOMBERG India said it could raise as much as a record 5.56 trillion rupees ($83 billion) by auctioning mobile-phone airwaves later this year, about four times last year’s proceeds. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government plans to sell spectrum across seven wavelengths starting Sept. 29, India’s telecom Secretary J.S. Deepak told reporters in New Delhi on Monday. The estimates of ...

  AFP China’s wall of cotton is coming down. Once the world’s biggest grower of the crop, the country lost that crown to India in the season that just ended in July after depressed prices discouraged plantings. China’s sowings are set to drop again in the 12 months that started on Aug. 1, with harvested acres poised for the lowest ...

  Bloomberg British Columbia’s decision to impose a 15 percent tax on foreign buyers to cool Vancouver’s scorching housing market is poised to derail more than 400 deals worth millions of dollars and may prompt calls for legal action. At least 427 deals are likely to collapse due to the new measure, according to Dan Morrison, president of the Real ...

  Bloomberg Even in the pre-crash era, when real estate prices were surging, nine-figure deals for properties seemed outlandish. Then beginning in 2015, with ultra-luxury sales on the decline and homes in the seven and eight figures languishing on the market for twice as long as the year before, as well as undergoing price cuts, their existence seemed futile. Yet, ...

  Bloomberg Shares in Chinese property developer Glorious Property Holdings Ltd. were suspended Monday in Hong Kong pending an announcement about a privatization bid by the company’s founder and controlling shareholder. Glorious Property requested a halt in trading at 9 a.m. local time ahead of an announcement “containing inside information in relation to a possible privatization by the controlling shareholder ...

  Bloomberg In late 2014, fledgling entrepreneur Josh Tetrick persuaded investors to plow $90 million into his vegan food startup Hampton Creek Inc. Tetrick had impressed leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms by getting his eggless Just Mayo product into Walmart, Kroger, Safeway, and other top US supermarkets within about three years of starting his company. What Tetrick and his ...

  Bloomberg Online retailers like Amazon.com have made it possible to get books, high heels, laptops and groceries delivered to your doorstep after work and even on Sundays. But carriers at the US Postal Service pay a price for such convenience: they’re getting bitten by dogs. Attacks on postal employees are on the rise — in 2015 alone, they jumped ...