Climate crisis: HSBC exits Net Zero Banking Alliance
The UK banking giant was a founding member of the UN-convened alliance in 2021, which committed members to the transition to net zero and reaching goals laid out in the Paris Agreement.
'With this foundation in place, and as we work towards updating and implementing our Net Zero Transition Plan later in 2025, we, like many of our global peers, have decided to withdraw from the NZBA,' said HSBC in the statement.
Net zero refers to a balance between the production and removal of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and attaining Net Zero is an internationally recognised goal in slowing down the progression of global warming. The 2015 agreement, adopted by 195 parties at the UN Climate Change Conference, underlined the need to achieve the target.
String of departures
HSBC added that they remained committed to achieving net zero by 2050: 'We continue to support customers in all sectors to make progress towards their individual decarbonisation plans, recognising that the transition to net zero is not linear or uniform across sectors, markets, and regions.'
The move follows a string of departures from the alliance including six major US banks: Citigroup, Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and JP Morgan Chase. Each exited following the election of US President Donald Trump.
Trump signed an executive order in January to begin a process to withdraw the US from the Paris Agreement under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
When HKFP asked HSBC if there will be any external audit or monitoring of their new 2050 commitment, the bank did not respond. Nor did they reply when asked on Monday what environmental initiatives may be dropped as a result of the alliance withdrawal.
However, a spokesperson for HSBC Hong Kong told HKFP that they 'remain resolutely focused on supporting our customers to finance their transition objectives and on making progress towards our net zero by 2050 ambition.'
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
South China Morning Post
an hour ago
- South China Morning Post
4 reasons Trump has pushed his luck on tariffs too far
A seductive narrative has taken hold in financial markets since US President Donald Trump launched his assault on the global trading system in early April. Despite an average effective tariff rate that, according to the Yale Budget Lab, has surged to 18.6 per cent – up from 2.4 per cent in early January and the highest since 1933 – many investors and economists believe the global economy has averted a trade shock. Even the International Monetary Fund upgraded its global growth forecasts last month because of signs Trump's tariff blitz will cause less damage than initially feared. The results of Bank of America's latest Global Fund Manager Survey on August 10 showed investors were the most bullish since February, with only 5 per cent of respondents expecting a 'hard landing' for the global economy, compared with 49 per cent in April. The case for optimism has a lot to do with the avoidance of a full-blown recession and collapse in asset prices, a scenario that looked likely to materialise after Trump unveiled his ' Liberation Day ' tariffs on April 2. Since then, several factors have helped allay concerns. Only a few countries, including China , dared to hit back at the United States, sparing the world an all-out trade war. When push came to shove, Trump opted for partial climbdowns, preferring to extract concessions from countries and extend deadlines for the imposition of tariffs, as he did with China on August 11 America's trading partners have promised to invest vast sums in the US, while revenues from customs duties have reached record highs. Moreover, the US economy is holding up relatively well. Inflation remains contained, unemployment is low, corporate earnings are strong and there is little evidence so far that US consumers are shouldering the cost of the tariffs. Four months after Trump launched his trade offensive, dire prophecies of stagflation or recession have not come true. This is partly why the benchmark S&P 500 equity index currently stands at a record high. Yet it also helps explain why Trump feels emboldened to press ahead with higher tariffs . Investors have been doing Trump's bidding by driving up asset prices.
South China Morning Post
3 hours ago
- South China Morning Post
Trump's chip deal signals a new ‘pay-to-play' China trade policy, analysts say
US President Donald Trump's 'unprecedented' deal to allow exports of some advanced chips to China in exchange for a cut of the revenues – and hints that similar deals for other industries are being considered – signals that Washington is moving towards a potentially dangerous 'pay to play' foreign trade policy, analysts said. Conflicts of interest loom if the revenue-sharing model takes root, which could make it harder for American investors and exporters to do business in the world's second-largest economy, they added. Trump announced a deal on Monday by which the leading American chip designers AMD and Nvidia will be allowed to export several advanced chip models to China, with the companies contributing 15 per cent of the sales revenue to the US government. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on Wednesday said the export revenue-sharing deal could serve as a blueprint for other industries. In a TV interview with Bloomberg Surveillance, Bessent praised the arrangement as a 'unique solution' from Trump. 'I think we could see it in other industries over time,' Bessent said in the interview. 'Right now, this is unique, but now that we have the model and the beta test, why not expand it?' Analysts said AMD and Nvidia could comfortably share revenue because their deals covered older-model artificial intelligence accelerators that they had custom-made for the Chinese market. But other companies might face far greater problems if the US government asks them for a cut of the sales from their mainstream products.
AllAfrica
9 hours ago
- AllAfrica
Scott Bessent's got a Japanese blind spot
TOKYO – Fresh off getting outmaneuvered by Tokyo on a 'trade deal,' President Donald Trump's team is going even further to demonstrate its ignorance of the state of play in Japan. Case in point: US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent complaining that the Bank of Japan isn't hiking interest rates fast enough, when his boss is the reason officials can't tighten policy. As Bessent told Bloomberg this week: 'They're behind the curve. So they're going to be hiking and they need to get their inflation problem under control.' Sure, just as soon as Bessent gets Trumponomics under control. Does Bessent not understand that four months ago, BOJ Governor Kazuo Ueda was on track to get Japanese rates the furthest away from zero they've been in 26 years, only to get derailed by Trump's tariffs? To be sure, it's hard to know what the global face of the Trump 2.0 economy really believes and what he must say on television to keep his job. And it's painfully obvious what Bessent is up to here: trying to weaken the dollar via Japanese monetary policy as Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell slow-walks US rate cuts. Fair enough, but such comments are inspiring more eye-rolling in Asia than intellectual debate about BOJ policies. In Tokyo, in fact, the BOJ has become a backburner issue. With Japan expected to grow just 0.7% in the current fiscal year and inflation pressures easing, the odds of the BOJ raising rates at its September 18-19 or October 29-30 meetings have dwindled to the point that economists have pivoted to other topics. Yes, inflation is still way too high in Japan. But news that Japanese wholesale prices rose just 2.6% in July year on year suggests that the urgency for raising rates is diminishing. Perhaps Bessent has missed, too, that the Nikkei 225 Stock Average, on the same day he spoke to Bloomberg, rallied to an all-time record. The reason: delight over a US-Japan tariff deal that, in the end, demanded little of Tokyo. While a 15% Trump tax on Japanese goods is no one's idea of fun, it's a world away from the 35% the White House threatened. Japanese automakers are sure happy to be paying, in theory, a lower rate than the 25% Detroit must pay on imports from plants and suppliers in Canada and Mexico. To be sure, much of this is still shrouded in confusion as Trump gets an earful from unhappy US automakers. As Matt Blunt, president of The American Automotive Policy Council, puts it, 'any deal that charges a lower tariff for Japanese imports with virtually no US content than the tariff imposed on North American-built vehicles with high US content is a bad deal for US industry and US auto workers.' For automakers, there's a bit of a deja-vu-all-over-again dynamic here. As Blunt explains, the trade framework Trump negotiated with the UK did more to lower tariffs to 10% on some luxury cars built in England, such as the Rolls-Royce, Bentleys, Land Rovers, Jaguars and Aston Martins, than aid Detroit. The risk of Trump World reneging has the team of Japan's top tariff negotiator Ryosei Akazawa anxious. There's also been controversy over a practice called 'stacking,' whereby one 15% tariff is piled atop existing tariffs. After considerable back and forth, Japan claims Team Trump has agreed not to stack tariffs. For now, at least. All this is the product of a hastily assembled tariff deal with no written materials. The bottom line is that 'without a written agreement between Japan and the US, no promise or claim of mutual understanding is secure until it appears in an Executive Order,' says Richard Katz, who publishes the Japan Economy Watch newsletter. Lawmakers are deeply worried, too, that Trump could simply have a bad day and decide the US and Japan should negotiate a new, new tariff arrangement with its closest ally in Asia. 'Washington is just randomly shooting, and they are shooting some like-minded countries from behind,' says Taro Kono, a member of Japan's House of Representatives, who's often mentioned as a future prime minister. And that US$550 billion that Japan is expected to invest in the US at Trump's direction? What Trump calls a 'signing bonus' to be handed over to the White House – it's'our money,' as he said – Tokyo views as more of an aspirational endeavor with a vague timeline, perhaps over a number of years. Rather than forking over a pile of cash, Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba's team is eyeing a series of loans, grants and financial guarantees run through government-linked organizations like the Japan Bank for International Cooperation and Nippon Export and Investment Insurance. Suffice to say, the logistics of this are going to take lots of back and forth and loads of additional negotiation sessions. In the meantime, Ishiba's inner circle hopes the US courts will rule Trump's tariffs are unconstitutional, enabling Japan to avoid this whole mess. Also, Tokyo will watch closely to see how South Korea proceeds with the $350 billion it agreed to deploy in the US and what the European Union does about the $600 billion worth of US energy purchases Trump is demanding as part of its deal. None of these really matters in the end if Trump and Bessent don't get China to the table. Trump World's stuck-in-1985 policy mix has missed that in our globalized era, where supply chains matter more than national borders, bilateral trade deals mean less than multilateral ones. That is, unless Trump manages to get one with China's nearly $18 trillion economy. Combined, the US and China represent $45.5 trillion of gross domestic product (GDP). As tariff pain weighs on the US economy, Trump's challenge is to convince his base that the inflation, market chaos and extreme uncertainty of the last several months were somehow worth it. The only way, really, is a big, beautiful China trade deal that Trump can tout as proof he's still got some 'art of the deal' game left. Xi is playing hard to get, though, scoring another 90-day extension on talks. As Xi's China complicates the US Treasury's 2025, Bessent is having to do some Japan maintenance. One avenue is prodding the BOJ to raise rates in lieu of its inability to cajole the US Fed to lower them. Another: soothing nerves in Tokyo about its $1.1 trillion exposure to Trumponomics. Japan is by far the biggest holder of US Treasury securities. That's a rough place to be when Trump is working to morph the Fed into the People's Bank of China by stripping it of its independence. Trump, of course, has threatened to fire Powell for not bowing to his demand for big rate cuts. Bessent, commenting on how much Fed easing he wants, argues that 'we should probably be 150, 175 basis points lower' from the current 4.25% to 4.5% target range. If the Fed is perceived as becoming an extension of Trump's West Wing, the dollar would drop for all the wrong reasons. And Trump's assumption that the Fed slashing rates at his behest would lower borrowing costs might not end well. It's very likely that Powell cutting rates sharply in a cloud of Trumpian suspicion would result in long-term yields surging. Already, the US is spending more on interest payments on the national debt each year than on the American military. Tokyo worries deeply about the prospect of sustaining hundreds of billions of dollars of losses if Trump crashes the US government debt market. But then Tokyo has also had to fend off an avalanche of misinformation from Trump World. Trump claims, for example, that Tokyo's non-tariff barriers keep Japanese from buying US cars. The real reason is that Japan makes high-quality, fuel-efficient cars geared for narrow Japanese streets and claustrophobic parking spaces, while oversized American vehicles often lack practicality on Japan's roadways. And here's Bessent adding to the mountain of misconceptions as he argues that volatility in Japan is putting US Treasuries at risk. 'There's definitely leakage from — the Japanese have an inflation problem,' he says. Bessent added that he's spoken with BOJ head Ueda recently, noting: 'My opinion, not his — they're behind the curve. So they're going to be hiking.' Not exactly. Certainly not until Bessent finds the courage to counsel Trump against the forever trade wars he seems to be launching in real time. Thanks to the collateral damage from the tariffs, the odds are rising that the BOJ's next move will be to cut rates as GDP takes hits, not raise them. Follow William Pesek on X at @WilliamPesek
