Asian shares are mixed after US stocks fall on weakened hopes for a September interest rate cut
Japan's Nikkei 225 rose 0.9% to 41,020.91 after the Bank of Japan kept interest rates steady at 0.5% and raised inflation projections. The move follows Tokyo's trade deal with Washington.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 1% to 24,920.67, while the Shanghai Composite Index slid 0.7% to 3,588.73.
In Seoul, the Kospi edged down 0.3% to 3,244.40 after South Korea reached a 15% tariff deal with the U.S., with no levies on American goods like cars, trucks and farm products. The deal also includes South Korea's purchase of $100 billion U.S. energy imports and $350 billion worth of investments in the U.S.
Australia's S&P ASX 200 shed 0.1% to 8,743.80. India's BSE Sensex added 0.2% to 81,481.86. Taiwan's TAIEX rose 0.4% to 23,551.92.
Rabo Bank, citing the U.S. trade deals with other countries, including Bangladesh, said in a commentary that 'it appears to be only a matter of time before India agrees to terms to ensure that it retains favorable access to the US market and all of those other markets that (U.S. President Donald) Trump has demonstrated he has the power to direct through economic coercion.'
Rabo added that the terms of a U.S.-India trade deal would almost certainly include Indian purchases of U.S. arms and energy products and preferential access to U.S. agricultural goods.
'A potential loser in all of this is Australia. With the US sending more wheat to Indonesia and Bangladesh and more LNG to Japan and South Korea, Australian exports stand to be displaced from their traditional markets,' it added.
Trump on Wednesday announced a 25% tariff on imports coming from India, along with an additional tax because of India's purchases of Russian oil, beginning on Aug. 1. That's when stiff tariffs Trump has proposed for many other countries are also scheduled to kick in, unless they reach trade deals that lower the rates. But the U.S. president said the two countries were still in negotiations.
On Wall Street on Wednesday the S&P 500 edged down by 0.1%, coming off its first loss after setting all-time highs for six successive days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 171 points, or 0.4%, and the Nasdaq composite rose 0.1%.
Stocks felt pressure from rising Treasury yields in the bond market after the Federal Reserve voted to hold its main interest rate steady. The move may upset Trump, who has been lobbying for lower interest rates, but it was widely expected on Wall Street.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell may have surprised investors by pushing back on expectations that the Fed could cut rates at its next meeting in September. Besides Trump, two members of the Fed's committee have also been calling for lower rates to ease the pressure on the economy, and they dissented in Wednesday's vote.
But Powell would not commit to a September cut in rates, pointing to how inflation remains above the Fed's 2% target, while the job market still looks to be 'in balance.'
Monday Mornings
The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week.
A cut in rates would give the job market and overall economy a boost, but it could also risk fueling inflation when Trump's tariffs may be set to raise prices for U.S. consumers. The Fed's job is to keep both the job market and inflation in a good place.
In other dealings on Thursday, U.S. benchmark crude oil lost 4 cents to $69.96 per barrel while Brent crude, the international standard, shed 13 cents to $72.34 per barrel.
The U.S. dollar fell to 148.87 Japanese yen from 149.44. The euro rose to $1.1422 from $1.1412.
___
AP Business Writer Stan Choe contributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Winnipeg Free Press
44 minutes ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
In rejecting the jobs report, Trump follows his own playbook of discrediting unfavorable data
WASHINGTON (AP) — When the coronavirus surged during President Donald Trump's first term, he called for a simple fix: Limit the amount of testing so the deadly outbreak looked less severe. When he lost the 2020 election, he had a ready-made reason: The vote count was fraudulent. And on Friday, when the July jobs report revisions showed a distressed economy, Trump had an answer: He fired the official in charge of the data and called the report of a sharp slowdown in hiring 'phony.' Trump has a go-to playbook if the numbers reveal uncomfortable realities, and that's to discredit or conceal the figures and to attack the messenger — all of which can hurt the president's efforts to convince the world that America is getting stronger. 'Our democratic system and the strength of our private economy depend on the honest flow of information about our economy, our government and our society,' said Douglas Elmendorf, a Harvard University professor who was formerly director of the Congressional Budget Office. 'The Trump administration is trying to suppress honest analysis.' The president's strategy carries significant risks for his own administration and a broader economy that depends on politics-free data. His denouncements threaten to lower trust in government and erode public accountability, and any manipulation of federal data could result in policy choices made on faulty numbers, causing larger problems for both the president and the country. The White House disputes any claims that Trump wants to hide numbers that undermine his preferred narratives. It emphasized that Goldman Sachs found that the two-month revisions on the jobs report were the largest since 1968, outside of a recession, and that should be a source of concern regarding the integrity of the data. Trump's aides say their fundamental focus is ensuring that any data gives an accurate view of reality. Not the first time Trump has sought to play with numbers Trump has a long history of dismissing data when it reflects poorly on him and extolling or even fabricating more favorable numbers, a pattern that includes his net worth, his family business, election results and government figures: — Judge Arthur Engoron ruled in a lawsuit brought by the state of New York that Trump and his company deceived banks, insurers and others by massively overvaluing his assets and exaggerating his net worth on paperwork used in making deals and securing loans. — Trump has claimed that the 2016 and 2020 presidential elections were each rigged. Trump won the 2016 presidential election by clinching the Electoral College, but he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton, a sore spot that led him to falsely claim that millions of immigrants living in the country illegally had cast ballots. He lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden but falsely claimed he had won it, despite multiple lawsuits failing to prove his case. — In 2019, as Hurricane Dorian neared the East Coast, Trump warned Alabama that the storm was coming its way. Forecasters pushed back, saying Alabama was not at risk. Trump later displayed a map in the Oval Office that had been altered with a black Sharpie — his signature pen — to include Alabama in the potential path of the storm. — Trump's administration has stopped posting reports on climate change, canceled studies on vaccine access and removed data on gender identity from government sites. — As pandemic deaths mounted, Trump suggested that there should be less testing. 'When you do testing to that extent, you're going to find more people,' Trump said at a June 2020 rally in Oklahoma. 'You're going to find more cases. So I said to my people, 'Slow the testing down, please.'' While Trump's actions have drawn outcry from economists, scientists and public interest groups, Elmendorf noted that Trump's actions regarding economic data could be tempered by Congress, which could put limits on Trump by whom he chooses to lead federal agencies, for example. 'Outside observers can only do so much,' Elmendorf said. 'The power to push back against the president rests with the Congress. They have not exercised that power, but they could.' White House says having its own people in place will make data 'more reliable' Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, took aim at the size of the downward revisions in the jobs report (a combined 258,000 reduction in May and June) to suggest that the report had credibility issues. He said Trump is focused on getting dependable numbers, despite the president linking the issue to politics by claiming the revisions were meant to make Republicans look bad. 'The president wants his own people there so that when we see the numbers, they're more transparent and more reliable,' Hassett said Sunday on NBC News. Jed Kolko, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics who oversaw the Census Bureau and Bureau of Economic Analysis during the Biden administration, stressed that revisions to the jobs data are standard. That's because the numbers are published monthly, but not all surveys used are returned quickly enough to be in the initial publishing of the jobs report. 'Revisions solve the tension between timeliness and accuracy,' Kolko said. 'We want timely data because policymakers and businesses and investors need to make decisions with the best data that's available, but we also want accuracy.' Kolko stressed the importance in ensuring that federal statistics are trustworthy not just for government policymakers but for the companies trying to gauge the overall direction of the economy when making hiring and investment choices. 'Businesses are less likely to make investments if they can't trust data about how the economy is doing,' he said. Not every part of the jobs report was deemed suspect by the Trump administration. Before Trump ordered the firing of the Bureau of Labor Statistics commissioner, Erika McEntarfer, the White House rapid response social media account reposted a statement by Vice President JD Vance noting that native-born citizens were getting jobs and immigrants were not, drawing from data in the household tables in the jobs report. Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer also trumpeted the findings on native-born citizens, noting on Fox Business Network's 'Varney & Co.' that they are accounting 'for all of the job growth, and that's key.' During his first run for the presidency, Trump criticized the economic data as being fake only to fully embrace the positive numbers shortly after he first entered the White House in 2017. White House says transparency is a value The challenge of reliable data goes beyond economic figures to basic information on climate change and scientific research. Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. In July, taxpayer-funded reports on the problems climate change is creating for America and its population disappeared from government websites. The White House initially said NASA would post the reports in compliance with a 1990 law, but the agency later said it would not because any legal obligations were already met by having reports submitted to Congress. The White House maintains that it has operated with complete openness, posting a picture of Trump on Monday on social media with the caption, 'The Most Transparent President in History.' In the picture, Trump had his back to the camera and was covered in shadows, visibly blocking out most of the light in front of him. ___ Associated Press writer Michelle Price in Washington contributed to this report.
Winnipeg Free Press
4 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Frequent disasters expose climate risks to infrastructure in South Asia
KATHMANDU, Nepal (AP) — Floods that damaged hydropower dams in Nepal and destroyed the main bridge connecting the country to China show the vulnerability of infrastructure and need for smart rebuilding in a region bearing the brunt of a warming planet, experts say. The flooding of the Bhotekoshi River on July 8 also killed nine people and damaged an inland container depot that was being built to support increasing trade between the two countries. The 10 damaged hydropower facilities, including three under construction, have a combined capacity that could power 600,000 South Asian homes. Another smaller flood in the area on July 30 damaged roads and structures, but caused less overall destruction. Nepal's location in the Himalayan mountains makes it especially vulnerable to heavy rains, floods and landslides because the area is warming up faster than the rest of the world due to human-caused climate change. Climate experts say the increasing frequency of extreme weather has changed the playbook for assessing infrastructure risks while also increasing the need for smart rebuilding plans. 'The statistics of the past no longer apply for the future,' said John Pomeroy, a hydrologist at the University of Saskatchewan in Canada. 'The risk that goes into building a bridge or other infrastructure is generally based on historical observations of past risk, but this is no longer useful because future risk is different and often much higher.' While damage estimates from the July floods in the Rasuwa region are still being calculated, past construction costs give a sense of the financial toll. The Sino-Nepal Friendship Bridge alone, for example, took $68 million to rebuild after it was destroyed by a 2015 earthquake that ravaged Nepal. The latest disaster has also stoked fears of long-lasting economic damage in a region north of the capital city Kathmandu that spent years rebuilding after the 2015 quake. Nepali government officials estimate that $724 million worth of trade with China is conducted over the bridge each year, and that has come to a standstill. 'Thank God there wasn't much damage to local villages, but the container depot and bridges have been completely destroyed. This has severely affected workers, hotel operators, laborers, and truck drivers who rely on cross-border trade for their livelihoods,' said Kaami Tsering, a local government official, in a phone interview with The Associated Press. Among those affected is Urken Tamang, a 50-year-old parking attendant at the depot who has been out of work for several weeks. A small tea shop he runs nearby with his family has also suffered. 'We've been unlucky,' said Tamang, a former farmer who sold his land and changed jobs when work on the depot began. He added: 'The whole area was severely damaged by the 2015 earthquake, and just when life was slowly returning to normal, this devastating flood struck.' Disasters show need for climate-resilient infrastructure The Nepal floods are the latest in a series of disasters in South Asia during this year's monsoon season. Research has shown that extreme weather has become more frequent in the region including heat waves, heavy rains and melting glaciers. Climate experts said smart planning and rebuilding in climate-vulnerable regions must include accounting for multiple risks, installing early warning systems, preparing local communities for disasters and, when needed, relocating infrastructure. 'What we have to avoid is the insanity of rebuilding after a natural disaster in the same place where it occurred and where we know it will occur again at even higher probability,' said Pomeroy, the Canadian hydrologist. 'That's a very poor decision. Unfortunately, that's what most countries do.' Before rebuilding in Rasuwa, Nepal government officials need to assess overall risks, including those due to extreme weather and climate change, said Bipin Dulal, an analyst at Kathmandu-based International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. The bridge connecting the two countries was rebuilt to better withstand earthquakes after it was destroyed in 2015, but it appears that officials didn't properly account for the risk of flooding as intense as what occurred in early July, Dulal said. 'We have to see what the extreme risk scenarios can be and we should rebuild in a way in which the infrastructure can handle those extremes,' said Dulal. Dulal said that large building projects in South Asia typically undertake environmental impact assessments that don't adequately factor in the risks of floods and other disasters. The center is developing a multi-hazard risk assessment framework that it hopes will be adopted by planners and builders in the region to better account for the dangers of extreme weather. Resilient structures can save billions in the long run In 2024 alone, there were 167 disasters in Asia — including storms, floods, heat waves and earthquakes — which was the most of any continent, according to the Emergency Events Database maintained by the University of Louvain, Belgium. These led to losses of over $32 billion, the researchers found. 'These disasters are all wake-up calls. These risks are real,' said Ramesh Subramaniam, global director of programs and strategy at the Coalition for Disaster Resilient Infrastructure. A CDRI analysis found that $124 billion worth of Nepal's infrastructure is vulnerable to the impacts of climate-driven disasters, creating the potential for hundreds of millions of dollars in annual losses if the country doesn't invest in resiliency. 'Investing a relatively smaller figure now would prevent the loss of these enormous sums of damages,' said Subramaniam. Subramaniam said that most climate investments are directed towards mitigation, such as building clean energy projects and trying to reduce the amount of planet-heating gases being released. But given extreme weather damage already occurring, investing in adapting to global warming is also equally important, he said. 'I think countries are learning and adaptation is becoming a standard feature in their annual planning,' he said. Global efforts to prepare for and deal with such losses include a climate loss and damage fund set up by the United Nations in 2023. The fund currently has $348 million available, which the U.N. warns is only a fraction of the yearly need for economic damage related to human-caused climate change. The World Bank and Asian Development Bank have also provided loans or grants to build climate-resilient projects. In Nepal's recently flood-ravaged region, Tsering, the local government official, said the repeated disasters have taken more than a financial toll on residents. 'Even though the river has now returned to a normal flow, the fear remains,' he said. 'People will always worry that something like this could happen again.' ___ Arasu reported from Bengaluru, India ___ Follow Sibi Arasu on X at @sibi123 ___ Follow Niranjan Shrestha on Instagram at @nirishrestha ___ The Associated Press' climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
Winnipeg Free Press
5 hours ago
- Winnipeg Free Press
Company advised by Trump sons said it hoped to benefit from fed money, then took it back
NEW YORK (AP) — A public document filed by a company that just hired President Donald Trump's two oldest sons as advisers included a sentence early Monday that said it hoped to benefit from grants and other incentives from the federal government, which their father happens to lead. But when The Associated Press asked the Trump family business about the apparent conflict of interest, the document was revised and the line taken out. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. are getting 'founder shares' worth millions of dollars in New America Acquisition 1 Corp., a company with no operating business that hopes to fill that hole by purchasing an American company that can play 'a meaningful role in revitalizing domestic manufacturing,' according to to the filing. The president has geared his trade policy toward boosting manufacturing in the U.S. The original version of the securities filing said the target company should be 'well positioned' to tap federal or state government incentives. That reference was taken out of the revised version of the filing. The Trump Organization didn't reply to a question about whether New America still planned to benefit from government programs or why the line was cut. But the outside law firm Paul Weiss that helped prepare the document sent an email to AP saying it was 'mistake' made by 'scriveners,' an old term for transcribers of legal papers. Kathleen Clark, an expert in government ethics, said any excuses are too late because the Trumps had already tipped their hand. Monday Mornings The latest local business news and a lookahead to the coming week. 'They just deleted the language. They haven't committed not to do what they said earlier today they were planning to do,' said the Washington University law professor and Trump critic. 'It's an attempt to exploit public office for private profit.' New America is what's know as a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC. It's a publicly traded company that exists solely to use its funds to acquire another company and take the target public. New America plans to raise money by selling stock on the New York Stock Exchange at $10 a share. That will hand the two Trump sons a total of $5 million in paper wealth on the first day of trading. The company hopes to sell enough shares to raise $300 million, which it then plans to use buying a yet unidentified manufacturer. A press release issued by New America saying it was focused on 'American values and priorities.' It made no mention of the aim to get government incentives. The filing to New America's potential new investors to Securities and Exchange Commission was explicit about what it was looking for in target company. It said, among other things, it would that can ride 'public policy tailwinds' by benefiting from federal or state 'grants, tax credits, government contracts or preferential procurement programs.'
