May, 2019

• 20 May

  Is America losing the trade war with China?

  

  The Trump administration is going about its trade war with China all wrong. Its strategy and tactics are muddled. If Trump were a general watching the battle unfold, what he’d see is his troops getting slaughtered, while the enemy, though suffering casualties, was holding most of its positions. Trump has two goals, says Bill Reinsch, a trade expert at the ...

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• 20 May

  Italy’s options all look terrible

  

  Spare a thought for Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini. Italy’s youthful deputy prime ministers have little idea of how they will cobble together a budget for next year. The two leaders of the ruling Five Star and League parties must try to stick by their expensive promises to voters, while not upsetting Italy’s euro zone allies and the financial ...

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• 20 May

  Trump hands Huawei a stick to beat the US with

  Twin moves by the White House and Commerce Department have made clear where the US stands on Chinese technology, specifically Huawei Technologies Co. The message to US companies seeking to buy products from the telecom-equipment vendor is unambiguous: Don’t even think about it. The message to Huawei, meanwhile, is: Don’t push us. In his executive order, President Donald Trump summarised ...

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• 20 May

  Multiple trade battles will pressure markets

  Global stocks rebounded on optimism that maybe cooler heads will prevail before the trade wars get out of hand. That optimism is likely to be short-lived. Investors should not only expect to be buffeted repeatedly by tit-for-tat measures by the US and China, but by global trade disputes on two other major fronts. Such pessimism on the part of investors ...

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• 20 May

  White House shouldn’t drag India into trade war

  

  First China. Now India? In recent months, President Donald Trump has made clear that the trade war will reach beyond the People’s Republic. Not only has he threatened Japan and Europe with import duties on cars, he’s repeatedly blasted India as “the tariff king.” Trump has obsessed over the Asian giant’s high levies on Harley-Davidson motorcycles and complained about its ...

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• 20 May

  The disconnect underlying this economic miracle

  

  There’s a jarring disconnect at the heart of Australia’s 28-year economic miracle. The direction of the central bank’s latest forecasts has been clear: Estimates for the pace of growth were axed to 1.75 percent in the year to June 30, compared with 2.5 percent anticipated just three months earlier. Inflation, hovering below target since 2015, won’t climb back to the ...

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• 20 May

  Electric vehicles mean more power to you

  

  Bloomberg NEF’s latest annual outlook for electric vehicles is here. As usual, there’s a lot packed into those 130-odd pages. Here are two nuggets to get you started. First, Bloomberg NEF forecasts sales of electric passenger vehicles – mostly all-electric but including plug-in hybrids – to overtake sales of those running solely on internal combustion engines in 2038. That sounds ...

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• 20 May

  Stocks fall as trade war hits technology; bonds steady

  

  Bloomberg US equity futures dropped alongside stocks in Europe as the fallout of White House moves against Chinese telco giant Huawei rippled through the technology industry. Bonds pared an earlier loss while crude oil advanced. Contracts on the Nasdaq 100 led US declines and pointed to a weak opening in New York, while software and chip maker shares helped pull ...

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• 20 May

  China stocks near 3-month low amid Huawei ban news

  

  Bloomberg China’s stocks traded near their lowest since February, with the damage caused by escalating tensions with the US rout now topping $1.1 trillion. The Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.4% at the close, after earlier losing as much as 1.5%. The gauge is now among the world’s worst-performing national benchmarks this quarter, after beating every other market earlier in the ...

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• 20 May

  Japanese lenders struggling to survive in international markets

  

  Bloomberg Time and again since Japan emerged as a global economic force, its financial leaders have hatched plans to translate their influence into investment-banking clout. Time and again, they’ve failed. The retreat sounded by Nomura Holdings Inc. last month marks just the latest Japanese overseas flop, prompting current and former executives, as well as analysts, to question if they can ...

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