Asian shares mostly slip as focus shifts to US talks with China

San Francisco Chronicle​

2 days ago

TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares mostly declined Tuesday as some of the euphoria fizzled out over a tariff deal with Japan as proposed by President Donald Trump, which was followed by a similar deal with the European Union.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped nearly 0.7% to 40,725.23. Australia's S&P/ASX 200 lost 0.3% to 8,670.50. South Korea's Kospi was little changed after reversing earlier losses, edging less than 0.1% higher to 3,212.59.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 1.1% to 25,276.36, while the Shanghai Composite shed 0.3% to 3,586.93.
Analysts said markets were watching for the latest from Trump, which are now focused on the talks with China. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng were meeting in Sweden. Bessent has said the negotiations will likely lead to an extension of current tariff levels. There was no significant new information after the first day of talks.
'Aside from addressing economic imbalances, tariffs are also now well entrenched in the geo-political arena,' Tan Boon Heng of the Asia & Oceania Treasury Department at Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.
Last week, Trump announced a trade framework, placing a 15% tax on goods imported from Japan, a level far lower than the earlier 25% rate that the president had indicated. Trump also said Japan would invest $550 billion into the U.S. and open up to U.S. autos and rice. Details are still unclear, but the accord set off some momentary relief.
U.S. stock indexes drifted through a quiet Monday after the United States agreed to tax cars and other products coming from the European Union at a 15% rate, lower than Trump had threatened.
Many details of the trade deal are still to be worked out, and Wall Street is heading into a week full of potential flashpoints that could shake markets, including an interest rate decision Wednesday by the Federal Reserve.
The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that Fed officials will wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple of Trump's appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at the end of 2024.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 was nearly flat, edging up by less than 0.1% to 6,389.77 and setting an all-time high for a sixth straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.1% to 44,837.56, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.3% to its own record, closing at 21,178.58.
Tesla rose 3% after its CEO, Elon Musk, said it had signed a deal with Samsung Electronics that could be worth more than $16.5 billion to provide computer chips for the electric-vehicle company. Samsung's stock in South Korea jumped 6.8%.
Other companies in the chip and artificial-intelligence industries were strong, continuing their run from last week after Alphabet said it was increasing its spending on AI chips and other investments to $85 billion this year. Chip company Advanced Micro Devices rose 4.3%, and server-maker Super Micro Computer climbed 10.2%.
But an 8.3% drop for Revvity helped to keep the market in check. The company in the life sciences and diagnostics businesses reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected, but its forecast for full year profit disappointed analysts.
Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the U.S. stock market looks expensive unless companies will produce bigger profits.
Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit they made during the spring, with nearly a third of the businesses in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude inched up 1 cent to $66.72 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 6 cents to $70.10 a barrel.
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AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.