Asian shares mostly slip as focus shifts to US talks with China
Analysts said markets were watching for the latest from Trump, which are now focused on the talks with China. US 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 percent tax on goods imported from Japan, a level far lower than the earlier 25 percent rate that the president had indicated. Trump also said Japan would invest 550 billion into the US and open up to US autos and rice. Details are still unclear, but the accord set off some momentary relief. US 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 percent 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 percent to 6389.77 and setting an all-time high for a sixth straight day. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dipped 0.1 percent to 44837.56, while the Nasdaq composite added 0.3 percent to its own record closing at 21178.58. Tesla rose 3 percent 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 percent. 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 percent, and server-maker Super Micro Computer climbed 10.2 percent. But an 8.3 percent 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 US stock market looks expensive unless companies will produce bigger profits. Hundreds of US 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 US crude inched up 1 cent to 66.72 a barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, added 6 cents to 70.10 a barrel. In currency trading, the US dollar rose to 148.56 Japanse yen from 148.54 yen. The euro cost 1.1600 up from 1.1593.
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