Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets, and the world economy.
London is playing host to the latest stage in the US and China’s efforts to agree a trade deal.
Top US and Chinese officials are due to meet in the UK capital today, in an attempt to build on the preliminary agreement reached last month in Geneva, with rare-earth minerals and advanced technology likely to be high on the agenda.
Both sides are sending senior representatives – the US delegation is being led by Treasury secretaryScottBessent, commerce SecretaryHowardLutnickand US trade representativeJamiesonGreer. Vice premierHeLifengleads China’s team.
Investors, and leaders, around the globe will hope that the two superpowers can cool their dispute; they’re currently partway through a 90-day truce which reduced the new tariffs between the pair to 10%.
Yesterday, a UK government spokesman said:
The meeting follows a phone call betweenDonaldTrumpandXiJinpinglast week, in which Xi reportedly told Trump to “withdraw the negative measures” which the US has taken against China”.
Reminder: a week ago, China accused the US of “seriously violating” their Geneva pact, after Washington complained that Beijing had not delivered on promises to roll back restrictions on the export of key critical minerals to the US.
The sight of the two sides meeting again may cheer markets, which “are sniffing out the scent of détente”, according toStephen Innes,managing partner atSPI Asset Management.
Inneswrites:
All day: US-China trade talks in London
There’s a flurry of takeover excitement in the City this morning, where US chipmaker Qualcomm has secured a deal to buy UK semiconductor designer Alphawave in a $2.4bn deal.
The two companies have agreed takeover terms, withQualcommpaying 183p in cash for eachAlphawaveshare; they closed at 149p on Friday night.
That’s almost doubleAlphawave’sshare price at the end of March, the day beforeQualcommrevealed it was considering an offer.
TheAlphawaveboard has unanimously recommended the deal, under which shareholders can choose to exchange their stock forQualcomm, rather than taking cash.
Alphawavedesigns chips that allow high-speed data transfer, which are used in data centers which train and run artificial intelligence technology.
CristianoAmon, president and chief executive officer ofQualcomm, says Alphawave’s high-speed wired connectivity and compute technologies will complement Qualcomm’s power-efficient CPU and neural processing unit cores, adding:
China’s stock market has risen slightly today, amid hopes that today’s trade talks in London might yield progress.
TheCSI300index is up 0.25%, while theShenzhenCompositehas gained 0.8%.
There are larger gains in South Korea, where theKOSPIindexhas jumped 1.7%. Hong Kong’sHangSenghas gained 1.1%.
The outcome of these discussions will be “crucial” for market sentiment, reportsKathleen Brooks,research director atXTB.
Oof! China’s factories are slashing prices at the fastest rate in almost two years, as trade war tensions hit demand.
China’s producer price index fell 3.3% in May from a year earlier, worse than a 2.7% decline in April and the deepest contraction in 22 months, National Bureau of Statistics data showed on Monday.
The PPI index measures prices ‘at the factory gate’, so is a good gauge of demand for goods.
China has slipped further into deflation territory, underlining the importance of agreeing a trade deal with the US.
China’s consumer prices fell for a fourth consecutive month in May, new data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows.
The CPI index fell by 0.1% in May compared with a year ago, indicating a small drop in prices over the last 12 months. That suggests Beijing’s stimulus measures are not boosting domestic consumption and demand.
The annual CPI index has now been in negative territory since February, when it fell 0.7% year-on-year, follows by 0.1% drops in March and April.
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets, and the world economy.
London is playing host to the latest stage in the US and China’s efforts to agree a trade deal.
Top US and Chinese officials are due to meet in the UK capital today, in an attempt to build on the preliminary agreement reached last month in Geneva, with rare-earth minerals and advanced technology likely to be high on the agenda.
Both sides are sending senior representatives – the US delegation is being led by Treasury secretaryScottBessent, commerce SecretaryHowardLutnickand US trade representativeJamiesonGreer. Vice premierHeLifengleads China’s team.
Investors, and leaders, around the globe will hope that the two superpowers can cool their dispute; they’re currently partway through a 90-day truce which reduced the new tariffs between the pair to 10%.
Yesterday, a UK government spokesman said:
The meeting follows a phone call betweenDonaldTrumpandXiJinpinglast week, in which Xi reportedly told Trump to “withdraw the negative measures” which the US has taken against China”.
Reminder: a week ago, China accused the US of “seriously violating” their Geneva pact, after Washington complained that Beijing had not delivered on promises to roll back restrictions on the export of key critical minerals to the US.
The sight of the two sides meeting again may cheer markets, which “are sniffing out the scent of détente”, according toStephen Innes,managing partner atSPI Asset Management.
Inneswrites:
All day: US-China trade talks in London