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Asian shares edge up as dollar dips ahead of ECB policy, US jobs data
Shares in Asia crept higher and the US dollar languished ahead of the European Central Bank offering its policy outlook for a tumultuous global economy.
The dollar slid in the previous session after weak US jobs and services data, with more weighty employment data due on Friday. Damage to the US economy is becoming more apparent from President Donald Trump's erratic tariff action, while bilateral deals remain unrealised.
Canada prepared possible reprisals against the imposition of new US metals tariffs while the European Union reported progress in trade talks with Washington. Against that backdrop, market watchers considered the ECB almost certain to cut policy interest rates so will pay greater attention to what bank President Christine Lagarde signals about future decisions.
"There's uncertainty about the guidance the central bank will deliver given the murky outlook for US trade policy and global growth," said Kyle Rodda, a senior financial market analyst at Capital.com. "A failure to deliver sufficiently dovish guidance could upset the equity markets as well as give the euro upward trend additional momentum."
Trump's doubling of tariffs on steel and aluminium imports became effective on Wednesday, hitting Canada and Mexico in particular. The same day, his administration sought "best offers" from trading partners to stop other import levies taking effect in July.
Japan is sending key trade negotiator Ryosei Akaza to the US on Thursday for another round of talks. Germany's new chancellor, Friedrich Merz, is also due to head to Washington.
MSCI's broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan was up 0.7 per cent in early trade, whereas Japan's Nikkei stock index slid 0.2 per cent.
The dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, was flat at 98.85 after a 0.5 per cent slide on Wednesday.
The dollar rose 0.1 per cent against the yen to 142.92. The euro was flat at $1.1416 after a 0.4 per cent gain in the trading previous session.
Gold pared gains from the previous day while oil slipped after a build in US inventories and Saudi Arabia's cut to its July prices for Asian crude buyers.
Spot gold edged 0.1 per cent lower to $3,372.7 per ounce. US crude dipped 0.2 per cent to $62.75 a barrel.
The pan-region Euro Stoxx 50 futures were little changed while US stock futures, the S&P 500 e-minis, were down 0.1 per cent.
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Time of India
26 minutes ago
- Time of India
China leaders take reins at TikTok Shop in US as sales miss goal
ByteDance Ltd., TikTok 's parent company, has been replacing US-hired staff near Seattle with leaders connected to China, aiming to replicate its e-commerce success in Asia after sales fell short in America. TikTok Shop initially set a goal to increase its US e-commerce business tenfold last year to $17.5 billion in transaction volume, but the company had to drastically lower that goal, according to people familiar with the plan who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. TikTok established its Shop business in the Seattle area near Inc., the online retail giant it was aiming to displace. Meetings that used to be held in English are now often conducted in Mandarin and managers increasingly write in Chinese when communicating on Feishu, ByteDance's internal Slack-like app, with English-speaking staff forced to rely on the built-in translation function. More than 100 TikTok Shop employees in the US have been fired or have left amid confusion between leaders that has worsened the work environment, according to people familiar with the company. The cultural transition taking place in the company coincides with its fight for survival in the US — due mainly to the app's Chinese ties. A national security law passed by Congress last year requires TikTok's US business to be spun off from its Chinese parent company or it will face a ban. Lawmakers warned that TikTok's ties to China pose a threat to the safety and security of American users. President Donald Trump has twice delayed the ban — with legal assurances from his attorney general — and another deadline for divestiture looms later this month, though that might also be extended, Wall Street Journal has reported. ByteDance has said it doesn't intend to sell. The TikTok Shop near Seattle in February began requiring workers to be in the office five days a week for eight hours a day, according to a memo reviewed by Bloomberg. The change is in contrast to some other major tech companies that still offer flexible work schedules, and has been particularly burdensome for employees who often join late-night calls with colleagues in Asia after they leave the office, according to former employees. US-based staff require human resources and manager pre-approval to work from home. The changes were introduced after Bob Kang, China-based global head of TikTok's e-commerce division, visited the office in Bellevue, Washington, earlier this year and found there weren't enough staff pressent on a work day, according to multiple people who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. Increasing influence Increasing Chinese influence over TikTok's fastest-growing business may raise questions about its previous corporate promise to distance the US operation from China. After Trump initially tried to ban the app during his first term, the company announced a security plan dubbed 'Project Texas' and vowed to wall off the app's US data and operations from any Chinese oversight. TikTok Shop is the biggest source of revenue for the video-sharing app besides advertising, and it has become a major investment area for ByteDance. Adding full-scale commerce to its eye-catching content and popular influencers sets it apart from rivals like Instagram and YouTube. The company still aims to challenge Amazon in major markets. To better compete, TikTok Shop recruited aggressively near Seattle over the past three years, targeting people with experience at Amazon, according to a review of Linkedin profiles and people who worked at both companies. In some corners of TikTok's Bellevue office of roughly 1,000 employees, the workflow felt like a remix of previous Amazon teams, the people said. But since January, growing tension in the teams below Kang and Nico Le Bourgeois, who oversaw TikTok's e-commerce operations in the US, became a distraction for staff who were often unsure about whose orders to follow, the people said. TikTok's uncertain fate in the US also weighed on morale. The company carried out a round of layoffs in April. A second batch followed in May. In the first round, Le Bourgeois was demoted when Mu Qing, a Chinese executive from ByteDance's e-commerce platform Douyin moved to the Seattle area to run TikTok Shop in the US. After the second bout, Mu sent an internal message saying Le Bourgeois was leaving to pursue other opportunities, according to a copy of the message seen by Bloomberg. Those cuts were intended to improve TikTok's 'efficiency,' according to former employees, though it wasn't clear to staff what factors contributed to a worker's efficiency rating. More like Douyin With these changes, ByteDance leaders are bringing in people who are familiar with what worked for the company in China, where Douyin, its TikTok clone for the Chinese market, has evolved into a $490 billion shopping phenomenon. In addition to Mu, who was the head of Douyin's e-commerce, six other leaders with Chinese backgrounds were appointed in April, according to a different internal memo from Kang viewed by Bloomberg. One challenge is that habits of many American users trend toward passive TikTok scrolling as opposed to making purchases in the app. Some US sellers told Bloomberg that they have also been reluctant to invest in the platform, given the possible ban. The final tally for 2024 sales came in at around $9 billion, according to an estimate by Singapore-based consultancy Momentum Works, far below the internal goal of $17.5 billion in transaction volume. A TikTok spokesperson previously called the $17.5 billion internal goal 'inaccurate.' TikTok Shop's US struggles haven't halted the company's global shopping ambitions. ByteDance in 2021 rolled out e-commerce services in countries including Indonesia, Vietnam and the UK. In Southeast Asia, it's already the region's biggest shopping platform after Shopee, according to Momentum Works. Last year, TikTok Shop opened in five countries in Europe, including Germany and Spain. The Europe expansion was delayed because the company first prioritised US growth, Bloomberg reported. A TikTok spokesperson did not respond to an emailed request for comment for this story. This is a crucial month for TikTok in the US. The company will host merchants and creators in Los Angeles next week for a summit featuring some of the new leaders of the e-commerce unit. The current deadline for ByteDance to sell the TikTok's US operation is June 19 and there have been several interested suitors. The company came close to a possible spin-off in April to a consortium of investors that included Oracle Corp., but the deal was scuttled in part because of Trump's trade war with China. Meanwhile, the churn of e-commerce employment continues in the Seattle area. Current and former TikTok Shop employees told Bloomberg that they get hounded by recruiting messages from Temu , another Chinese e-commerce competitor.
Scroll.in
an hour ago
- Scroll.in
Slighted by Trump, India must rejig foreign policy paradigm
Indians were shocked by US President Donald Trump asking American CEOs and industrialists to not base their manufacturing facilities in India. Trump reportedly told Apple CEO Tim Cook that he does not want him to manufacture iPhones in India. He threatened Apple with 25% tariffs if they did so. This is not the first time that Trump directed major industry leaders not to manufacture in India. Earlier, in February, he had told Elon Musk not to set up a Tesla factory in India as that would be 'unfair' to the US. This directive came just after Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi met the US President and the Tesla CEO on February 13 with the hope that Tesla would build in India. These provocative actions have sorely disappointed Indians who were expecting to be beneficiaries of Trump's benevolence as US companies moved out of China. In addition, Indians were shocked at the way illegal migrants from the country were degraded, criminalised and transported back to India in fetters on a military aircraft. And now, Indian students are not getting visas or their visas are being cancelled disrupting their studies at US universities. Indians recovering from shock Trump's comeback electoral win of November 2024 was welcomed in India as he was seen by the establishment virtually as 'Our man in Washington'. This perception was bolstered by the hyped chemistry between him and Modi. However, public opinion has started shifting in the opposite direction. Trump's core foreign policy objectives rest on trade, tariffs, transactions and targets. He chose to target India as a ' very high tariff nation ' in his very first address to the joint session of the US Congress on March 7 when he implied that India imposed the most unfair tariffs on the US. Trump called India a 'tariff king' and a 'big abuser'. The US trade deficit of US$100 billion with India irked Trump. Now, he is pushing for an almost zero tariff on US goods, especially cars – now that Tesla is ready to enter the Indian market. However, Trump wants the opening of markets for free and easy entry of US goods – irrespective of whether they are in demand in India or not; for example, he seeks to replace Scotch with American bourbon whiskey. The US is targeting both China and India. Others in the Global South are likely to be targeted next. Trump's 'Make America Great Again' policy seems to be about cutting the bottom out of any potential manufacturing adversary. Trump equates India and Pakistan As if the economic hit was not hard enough, the Trump team has gone after India's strategic interests in the light of the ghastly terror attack in Pahalgam, Kashmir, on April 22, which India believes was Pakistan-sponsored, and the Indian retribution that followed. Trump called the terror attack a 'bad one', without naming Pakistan, but turned it into an even-handed India-Pakistan conflict, stating incorrectly that the two had been ' fighting for 1,500 years '. As usual, Trump put the focus on himself as he said he was 'close to both countries', and the two would ' figure it out one way or another ', distancing himself from any special relation with India that Indian strategic analysts used to boast about. As India carried out military strikes against Pakistan, named Operation Sindoor, the US Presidential team reiterated 'good relations with both' countries and Trump said that if he could 'help I will be there'. In the two days of the military operations that followed, the US Secretary of State repeatedly said that they were speaking to both sides, which subsequently agreed to an immediate ceasefire and start talks. He claimed that the ' US stopped nuclear conflict '. Trump further said he would 'soon' give trade access to India-Pakistan, a claim that the US Commerce Secretary put on record. India took pains to claim that while US Secretary of State Marco Rubio did speak to Indian External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar, the military operation was halted after the Pakistani Director General of Military Operations asked for a halt; ie, the ceasefire was reached bilaterally. India upset with US Why did India feel slighted by the alleged US role? The US hyphenated India-Pakistan, something that India does not like. It has sought to de-hyphenate itself with Pakistan by improving relations with the US for years. India perhaps also saw the US infantilising both countries with its rhetoric that only a politically mature US could stop the two squabbling neighbours. US claims also demonstrated its ability to intervene in South Asian affairs and underlined that the US remains a hegemon in this region. India also saw in the US statements a challenge to its strategic autonomy. It was seen by India as siding with Pakistan's nuclear blackmail and threat, as it helped demonstrate that the US had saved the world from a possible nuclear escalation. Lastly and most importantly, by pointing to Kashmir as the root cause of the war, the US was seen as internationalising an issue that India sees as an internal issue. It is quite possible that now, US think tanks will do their bit to showcase the US role and heighten this agenda. What India needs to do What can India conclude about the US behaviour? First, that the US has no permanent friends or enemies – only permanent interests. Second, that the US has a hub and spokes policy towards all – the US is the central hub and all other countries are spokes of different sizes that the US can manipulate and manage. Third, that the US military-industrial technology complex will seek to derive the greatest benefits from both countries and across the region. India will, therefore, have to rejig both its thinking and paradigm in foreign policy at the global, regional and bilateral levels as also in its domestic debates. India must also be wary of US interests drowning Indian interests – the US has always been a predatory power and embeds itself in regional conflicts and gains from these. India has been committed to multi-polarity, BRICS and other such forums and should stick with and enhance this. India must continue with self-reliance and its traditional time-tested partners. It also needs to curb the domestic war rhetoric as that does not help the interest of peace or show India as a sane voice of the Global South.
Hindustan Times
an hour ago
- Hindustan Times
Can Qatari jet gifted to Trump take a nuclear hit? What it needs to be Air Force One
Donald Trump recently received a luxury jet as a gift by the Qatari Royal family and is now reportedly planning to use the aircraft as a temporary Air Force One, the official air traffic control-designated call sign for the plane that carries carrying the US president. But converting the jet gifted by the Qatari royal family as a temporary Air Force One for presidential use may come at the cost of national security, officials cited in an Associated Press report said. As the White House navigates legal questions over accepting the plane, military and national security leaders are quietly debating how much to modify the aircraft — and how fast — to make it fit for a commander in chief. Installing the full suite of security and communications tech typical of Air Force One could cost upwards of $1.5 billion and take years, according to US officials, cited in the AP report, which added that the time it would take to do all of that would dash Trump's hopes of flying in the aircraft before the end of his term. The US Air Force is working on replacing the current aging 747s with highly customised presidential aircraft — a project plagued by delays and budget overruns. Experts have warned that retrofitting the Qatari plane to the same standard risks the same fate. Air Force secretary Troy Meink told Congress the core security upgrades for the Qatari jet would be 'less than $400 million' but did not elaborate. However, lawmakers and defense officials remain skeptical that a safe and fully equipped plane can be delivered in such a short window. Donald Trump, however, has made clear he wants the Qatari plane operational 'as soon as possible' while still 'adhering to security standards,' a White House official said, speaking anonymously. But experts caution that transforming the Qatari aircraft into a reliable Air Force One is no quick task. 'You'd have to break that whole thing wide open and almost start from scratch,' AP quoted Deborah Lee James, former Air Force Secretary, referring to the extensive rewiring needed to match Air Force One's security protocols. The list of required upgrades is not a short one: -Anti-missile defense,-EMP shielding,-Classified communications,-and command systems robust enough to survive a nuclear blast. 'The point is, it remains in flight no matter what,' James said. While cutting corners might be tempting for a president on the clock, experts say Secret Service can plan for and mitigate risk but can never eliminate it. Trump, as commander in chief, has the authority to waive some requirements. Still, James warned, waiving certain features should remain classified: 'You don't want to advertise to your potential adversaries what the vulnerabilities of this new aircraft might be.' Cosmetic changes, however, are almost certain as Trump famously prefers a darker paint scheme modeled after his personal jet, and a model of the design reportedly still sits in his office. Trump personally toured the Qatari jet in February near Mar-a-Lago, accompanied by Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin. While the jet reportedly needs maintenance, officials say it's not beyond what's expected for an aircraft of its size and complexity.
