Asian shares mostly advance after Wall Street cruises to more records
Japan's Nikkei 225 edged 0.1% lower to 39,854.28 as traders stayed on the sidelines ahead of an election for the upper house of parliament on Sunday that could wipe out the ruling coalition's upper house majority.
The government reported that core inflation excluding volatile food and energy prices rose to 3.3% in June from a year earlier, slowing from 3.7% in May but still above the central bank's 2% target.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index added 0.7% to 24,676.64, while the Shanghai Composite index advanced 0.3% to 3,528.90.
Taiwan's Taiex climbed 0.9%, helped by a 2.2% gain for Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. On Thursday, TSMC reported its net income soared nearly 61% in the last quarter from a year earlier. The world's largest contract chip maker said it's seeing strong demand from artificial-intelligence and other customers. On Thursday, TSMC's stock that trades in the United States rose 3.4%.
Australia's S&P/ASX 200 rose 1.5% to 8,765.00, and the Kospi in South Korea shed 0.6% to 3,173.69. India's Sensex shed 0.3%.
'Asia's riding the global rally wave, AI fever refuses to break, and even the Fed is making soothing noises,' Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management wrote in a commentary. 'But underneath all the sunshine is a market running hot, with volatility on sale and positioning still cautious.'
On Thursday, the S&P 500 climbed 0.5% to top its all-time high set a week ago, closing at 6,297.36. The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.5% to 44,484.49, and the Nasdaq composite added 0.7% to its own record set the day before, climbing to 20,885.65.
Trading was calmer than on Wednesday, when President Donald Trump rocked financial markets by saying he had discussed the 'concept' of firing the chair of the Federal Reserve, though he said he was unlikely to do so. Such a move could help Wall Street get the lower interest rates investors love, but would also risk a weakened Fed unable to make the unpopular moves needed to keep inflation under control.
Apart from TSMC, other stocks involved in AI also climbed. A 1% gain for Nvidia was one of the strongest forces pushing upward on the S&P 500.
PepsiCo jumped 7.5% after delivering revenue and profit that topped Wall Street's expectations.
Monday Mornings
The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week.
Treasury yields were mixed following several better-than-expected reports on the economy.
One said that shoppers upped their spending at U.S. retailers by more last month than economists expected. Such spending, along with a relatively solid jobs market, has helped keep the U.S. economy out of a recession.
A separate report said that fewer U.S. workers applied for unemployment benefits last week, which could be a signal of limited layoffs. A third suggested unexpectedly strong growth in manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region.
Such solid data could keep the Federal Reserve on pause when it comes to interest rates. The Fed has been keeping rates steady this year, after cutting them at the end of last year. The Fed's chair, Jerome Powell, has been insisting that he wants to wait for more data about how Trump's tariffs will affect the economy and inflation before the Fed makes its next move.
That's because while lower interest rates could boost the economy and prices for investments, they would also give inflation more fuel. Prices may already be starting to feel the upward effects of tariffs, based on the latest data. In other dealings on Friday, U.S. benchmark crude oil rose 33 cents to $66.56 per barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, also was up 33 cents, at $69.85 per barrel. The U.S. dollar edged slightly higher to 148.67 against the Japanese yen from 148.61. The euro rose to $1.1623 from $1.1596. ___ AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.
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38 minutes ago
What the U.S. dairy industry really wants from Canada
U.S. dairy producers insist they're not looking for Canada to dismantle its supply management system, but they do want Canada to follow the letter and spirit of the existing deal that governs the dairy trade between the two countries. U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly blasted Canada as unfair and ripping us off with massive dairy tariffs, in a way that isn't fully accurate. However, senior figures in the U.S. dairy industry are concerned there's also some misrepresentation happening north of the border, creating a false perception of what U.S. producers are actually seeking in terms of access to the Canadian market. Shawna Morris, executive vice-president for trade policy and global affairs with the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, says it's not true that her industry wants Canada to abandon its system for protecting the dairy sector. We've never been out to eliminate Canada's supply management, said Morris in an interview from her office in Arlington, Va., just outside Washington. It's much easier to create a boogeyman and fear-mongering around that being the goal of the Americans, but that's certainly not what our industry has advocated. Enlarge image (new window) Donald Trump dances as he departs a September 2024 campaign event at Central Wisconsin Airport in Mosinee, Wis. The top dairy-producing state in the U.S. has also been a key swing state in recent presidential elections, decided by less than one percentage point in each election since 2016. Photo: Associated Press / Alex Brandon Becky Rasdall Vargas, senior vice-president of trade and workforce policy at the International Dairy Foods Association lobby group, says she recognizes the Trump administration has been fairly abrasive in its tone toward Canada. But at the same time, I think we feel pretty ignored by Canada in terms of our legitimate trade concerns. Two main trade irritants According to Morris and Rasdall Vargas, the U.S. industry has two main irritants with Canada: how the Canadian government allocates the existing quotas for tariff-free imports of dairy products, and how Canadian milk producers dump cheap milk protein into the international market. The import quotas negotiated under the Canada-U.S.-Mexico Agreement (CUSMA, which Americans call USMCA) are designed to give U.S. producers tariff-free access worth roughly 3.5 per cent of Canada's domestic demand for dairy products. Three per cent is pretty limited, said Morris. It's certainly not a situation where our industry is gonna come in and take over the Canadian dairy market. How much U.S. milk comes into Canada? See interactive chart here (new window) CUSMA sets import quotas for 14 categories of dairy products. That allows an annual volume of each category (new window) to enter Canada tariff-free, and any imports exceeding the quota would get hit with sky-high tariffs of 200 per cent or more. Canada's rationale for this is ensuring the domestic dairy industry thrives by effectively capping how much the U.S. can export each year, preventing cheaper American products from dominating the market. The U.S. government supports its dairy sector with hefty direct subsidies (new window) . The U.S. dairy industry says it's not asking for Canada's quotas to be increased or the tariff rates to be decreased. Rather, it wants changes to how Ottawa allocates the quotas: more specifically, who gets them. Big Canadian dairies dominate import quotas Much of the quota volume is allocated to major Canadian-owned dairy processing companies such as Saputo (new window) and Agropur (new window) . Industry analysts on both sides of the border say such companies have little incentive to import U.S. products that would compete with their own. According to the U.S. producers, this restricts their access to the Canadian market. Their evidence for that claim: Canadian trade statistics (new window) showing tariff-free imports from the U.S. have almost never reached the quota limits in any category. WATCH | What Donald Trump gets wrong (and right) about Canada's dairy tariffs: For five years, Canada's been playing games with these tariff rate quotas, said Morris. That's a lot of volume that should have been able to reach Canadian consumers. Despite those complaints, Canada's imports of U.S. dairy products have risen significantly since the CUSMA quotas took effect in 2020. Those imports totalled $897 million in 2024, according to Statistics Canada data (new window) , more than four times the value of imports in any year before 2020. Trade certainly should be far higher than it is, said Morris. That was what USMCA promised to deliver and quite frankly has fallen far short. A key change the U.S. producers would like to see is for Canada to grant retailers and the food-service sector a share of the tariff-free quotas, allowing them to import some U.S. dairy products directly. The U.S. industry also wants Canada to be far stricter in taking away allocations from importers that fail to use their full quota in a given year. While a bill that Parliament passed in June (new window) bars Ottawa from agreeing to raise the dairy import quotas or lower the tariffs, it doesn't prevent other changes to the system, leaving Canadian trade negotiators some wiggle room. WATCH | Canada's supply management system, explained: 'An inherent mismatch' The other chief complaint from the U.S. focuses on Canada's cheap exports of milk proteins, also described as milk solids, such as skim milk powder. The Americans argue that because Canada's supply management system keeps domestic prices artificially high, Canada can sell its excess production of milk proteins internationally at artificially low prices, undercutting the competition. It frankly makes no sense that you could have one of the highest milk prices in the world and yet be exporting dairy protein at some of the lowest prices globally, said Morris. That's just an inherent mismatch. Canada's pricing of milk solids for the export market is currently the subject of a U.S. International Trade Commission investigation, ordered by (new window) the Trump administration, with a hearing scheduled for Monday (new window) . Dairy Farmers of Canada declined a request for comment on the case. During the recent election, all major parties expressed support for supply management and stated that it would be off the table in upcoming trade negotiations, the organization said in a news release (new window) in June. The Trump administration is not the first to accuse Canada of breaching CUSMA terms on dairy. Enlarge image (new window) Cows wait to be milked at a dairy farm in Granby, Que., on Feb. 5. Photo: The Canadian Press / Christinne Muschi Joe Biden's administration twice took legal action over Canada's handling of the dairy quotas, claiming it was unfairly undermining (new window) U.S. access to the Canadian market. The U.S. won the first dispute (new window) , which it launched in 2021, but failed (new window) to win the second, in 2023. Now in 2025, Rasdall Vargas says her industry wants Canada to be willing to hear its true concerns and do something about them. Ultimately, when we have a trading partner who isn't taking our concerns seriously until they're threatened to do so, it's also not a good feeling from our side, she said. Whatever anyone thinks about Trump's bluster on Canadian dairy, Rasdall Vargas believes it's having an impact. I think that's the president's way of having our back, probably more abrasively than Canada would like, she said. I will say I've never seen Canadian dairy interests take U.S. concerns about Canadian dairy policy more seriously than in the past six months. Mike Crawley (new window) · CBC News · Senior reporter Mike Crawley has covered Ontario politics for CBC News since 2009. He began his career as a newspaper reporter in B.C., spent six years as a freelance journalist in various parts of Africa, then joined the CBC in 2005. Mike was born and raised in Saint John, N.B. Follow Mike Crawley on Twitter (new window)
National Post
38 minutes ago
- National Post
Laryssa Waler: Stop the tariff tit for tat — let's build a Canada the world wants to bet on
Donald Trump's threat to impose sweeping tariffs on Canada landed with all the grace and subtlety of a toddler in full meltdown mode. He and his team are considering duties as high as 35 per cent on everything from lumber to autos. Predictably, Canada is preparing retaliatory measures. Article content We've seen this movie before, but as any parent knows, reasoning with a tantrum rarely works. With two sons and 13 years spent honing my skills in tantrum diplomacy, I've learned firsthand that yelling louder or digging in rarely helps. You win by stepping back, staying calm, and changing the game entirely. Article content Article content Article content Article content First: cut the cost of capital. Canada's combined federal-provincial corporate tax rate sits around 26.2 per cent — among the highest in the G7, and significantly above the OECD average of 23.9 per cent. And with falling corporate and personal tax rates in the U.S., we're lagging even further behind. If Canada does nothing, we risk losing investment to our neighbours south of the border for good. Article content Consider Ireland, home to just 5.5 million people, where a 12.5 per cent corporate tax rate attracted giants like Apple, Intel, and Pfizer. Far from gutting public services, this strategy created a 24 billion euros (C$38.5 billion) surplus in 2023 and gave Ireland the fiscal strength to establish a sovereign wealth fund. Similarly, Singapore's statutory corporate tax rate of 17 per cent often drops even lower thanks to smart exemptions and streamlined processes. Last year, Singapore, with a population of nearly six million people, attracted nearly $190 billion in foreign direct investment — almost double Canada's performance. Article content Of course, reducing taxes and regulations won't be painless. In the short term, this transition will mean challenges — especially for those industries that have come to rely on our overly regulated, taxpayer-subsidized, Ottawa-knows-best, economy. Instead, let's shift current subsidies toward retraining programs, job transition assistance, and targeted support to help workers adjust and thrive in a more competitive, forward-looking economy. Article content Tax reform alone isn't enough — we need to replace cumbersome red tape with red-carpet service. Investors don't just look at costs; they're closely watching timelines and value predictability. Right now, Canada is infamous for project delays. Ottawa needs to deliver on its promised 'one-door, one-year' approvals guarantee. If regulators can't reach a decision within 12 months, the default answer should become yes. Article content Let's also make livability our defining advantage. Corporations don't just invest in markets — they move their families. Canada used to be a natural winner here, but our shine has dulled. Carjackings in Toronto have more than doubled since 2019, violent crime rates are climbing, and housing costs have soared — starter homes in Toronto and Vancouver regularly exceed seven figures. Our education system often seems more focused on woke social justice initiatives than on mastering the basics, and our students' math and reading scores are slipping. The reality is, the highly skilled immigrants that accompany foreign direct investments are beginning to look elsewhere.
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As Trump shows off his golf courses for Britain's leader, crisis in Gaza looms
EDINBURGH, Scotland (AP) — President Donald Trump once suggested his golf course in Scotland 'furthers' the U.S.-U.K. relationship. Now he's getting the chance to prove it. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is meeting Monday with Trump at a golf property owned by the president's family near Turnberry in southwestern Scotland — then later traveling to Abderdeen, on the country's northeast coast, where there's another Trump golf course and a third is opening soon.
