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      Asia Stocks Rise on Hope for Lower Tariffs After U.S.-China Talks

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      Investors were optimistic after American officials touted progress in trade negotiations over the weekend, though details had yet to be released.Stocks in Asia gained on Monday after weekend talks signaled that progress had been made in easing trade tensions between the United States and China.Benchmark indexes in Japan and South Korea edged higher in early trading on Monday morning. Stocks in Hong Kong and Shenzhen in China climbed about 1 percent, while futures pointed to similar gains for the S&P 500 when trading begins in New York.Meetings in Geneva between U.S. and Chinese officials concluded on Sunday with Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, saying that “substantial progress” had been made. China’s vice premier, He Lifeng, called the talks “candid, in-depth and constructive.” Details are expected to be released on Monday, both sides said.The meetings were the first between Washington and Beijing since President Trump ratcheted up tariffs on Chinese imports to 145 percent and China retaliated with its own taxes of 125 percent on U.S. goods. The tariffs are so high as to effectively block much of the trade between the two countries.The escalating trade war has left financial markets uneasy, and the meeting raised investors’ hopes that tariffs could eventually be lowered.Analysts at the financial services firm Wedbush Securities said the talks were a “positive step in the right direction.” They anticipated that an initial agreement, once unveiled during the U.S. day on Monday, would “at a minimum” involve a “much lower level” for tariffs.Economists have warned that the tit-for-tat trade barriers have significantly increased the possibility of an economic downturn. That includes in Asia, where some of the biggest economies, including Japan and South Korea, are heavily reliant on both China and the United States as trade partners.The World Trade Organization has forecast that the continuing division of the global economy into “rival blocs” could cut global gross domestic product by nearly 7 percent over the long run. Earlier this month, Japanese officials slashed their growth forecast for this year by more than half.Last week, China reported that its exports to the United States in April dropped 21 percent from a year earlier. Recession warnings are beginning to emerge in the United States.Heading into the weekend, investors had relatively low expectations for a breakthrough at the talks that would result in a meaningful reduction in tariffs. Many analysts expected the discussions to revolve around determining what each side wanted and how negotiations could move forward.Recently, Mr. Trump has opened the door to lower tariffs. Last week, he suggested that tariffs could come down to 80 percent. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick told Fox News that so-called reciprocal tariffs on trade with China may settle near 34 percent. More

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      in US Politics

      White House claims China trade deal reached after ‘productive’ Geneva talks

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      The White House has announced that a trade deal with China has been struck after two days of talks in Geneva.The announcement on Sunday came after the US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, told reporters that there had been “substantial progress” in talks between his team and that of the Chinese vice-premier, He Lifeng, in Geneva on defusing the trade war between the world’s two largest economies sparked by Donald Trump’s 145% tariffs.At a news conference later on Sunday, He, the top Chinese trade official, called the talks “candid” and said substantive progress had been made to reach an “important consensus”, according to China’s state-run media. The two sides will issue a joint statement agreed during the talks, the vice-premier said.In televised remarks that were posted on social media by the White House, Bessent said he would give more details on Monday, “but I can tell you that the talks were productive”.“I’m happy to report that we’ve made substantial progress between the United States and China in the very important trade talks,” Bessent told reporters.The US trade representative, Jamieson Greer, who spoke alongside Bessent, suggested more strongly that a deal had been reached.“It’s important to understand how quickly we were able to come to agreement, which reflects that perhaps the differences were not so large as maybe thought,” Greer said.“Just remember why we’re here in the first place,” he added. “The United States has a massive $1.2tn trade deficit, so the president declared a national emergency and imposed tariffs, and we’re confident that the deal we struck with our Chinese partners will help us to resolve, work toward resolving that national emergency.”Bessent said he had informed Trump of the progress of the talks.The meeting was the first face-to-face interaction between Bessent, Greer and He since the world’s two largest economies imposed tariffs well above 100% on each other’s goods.Although Bessent has said the bilateral tariffs were too high and needed to come down in a de-escalation move, he did not offer any details of reductions agreed and took no questions from reporters.On Saturday night, Trump wrote on his social media platform that the two sides were working on “a total reset … in a friendly, but constructive, manner.”“Many things discussed, much agreed to,” Trump posted. “We want to see, for the good of both China and the U.S., an opening up of China to American business. GREAT PROGRESS MADE!!!,” Trump added. Trump’s rhetoric, that China needs to be “opened” to US business seemed to ignore a half century of trade between the two nations since one of his political heroes, Richard Nixon, visited China in 1972.The US commerce secretary, Howard Lutnick, confirmed to CNN that the US will continue to keep “a 10% baseline tariff to be in place for the foreseeable future” even on imports from nations the US strikes new trade deals with.On Sunday, Kevin Hassett, the director of the National Economic Council, said: “What’s going to happen in all likelihood is that relationships are going to be rebooted. It looks like the Chinese are very very eager to play ball and renormalise things … they really want to rebuild a relationship that’s great for both of us.”Last week, Trump and the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, announced a limited bilateral trade deal.Hassett said the UK agreement provided a “really exciting blueprint” and that he had been briefed on 24 deals with other countries that are in the works. “They all look a little bit like the UK deal but each one is bespoke,” he said.Meanwhile, Lutnick dismissed reports of dock workers and truckers losing their jobs as a result of the tariffs.“This is just a China problem right now,” Lutnick said. “The rest of the world is 10% [tariffs]. So don’t overdo it.”“Prices are going to stay stable once this policy is done,” Lutnick added.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Oil Prices Slide Further on Plans to Increase Supply

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      U.S. oil prices fell to around $56 a barrel after the OPEC Plus cartel said it would bring more oil to market.Oil prices resumed their downward slide after the OPEC Plus cartel of oil producers said over the weekend that it would pump more oil, despite concerns that President Trump’s trade war will curb demand.The U.S. benchmark oil price fell to around $56 a barrel, from $58 on Friday. For many companies, the steady decline means it will not be profitable to drill wells in the United States despite Mr. Trump’s calls for increased production.Prices were last around this level in early April, just before Mr. Trump said he would pause reciprocal tariffs on most countries for 90 days. That announcement led to rallies in both the stock market and the oil market, though oil prices have since waned.That is partly because OPEC Plus is raising output at the same time that economists are warning that higher tariffs on most American trading partners will slow global economic growth and potentially cause a recession in the United States.The eight countries that make up the OPEC Plus cartel said on Saturday that they would further ramp up production in June.Lower commodity prices are causing some companies to pull back. There are about 9 percent fewer rigs drilling wells in the Permian Basin, the top U.S. oil field, than there were this time last year, when oil was trading near $80 a barrel, according to Baker Hughes.On Friday, Exxon Mobil and Chevron, the two largest U.S. oil and gas companies, reported their lowest first-quarter earnings in years. Those financial results reflect the market before Mr. Trump further escalated tariffs on China in early April.“It is clear that this uncertainty is weighing on economic forecasts, causing significant volatility and raising the prospects of slower growth,” Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, told analysts. More

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      For the U.S. and China, the Only Talking Is About Whether to Talk

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      The standoff over terms of negotiations, and whether they are happening, signals that a protracted economic fight lies ahead.As trade tensions flared between the world’s largest economies, communication between the United States and China has been so shaky that the two superpowers cannot even agree on whether they are talking at all.At a White House economic briefing this week, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent demurred multiple times when pressed about President Trump’s recent claim that President Xi Jinping of China had called him. Although top economic officials might usually be aware of such high-level talks, Mr. Bessent insisted that he was not logging the president’s calls.“I have a lot of jobs around the White House; running the switchboard isn’t one of them,” Mr. Bessent joked.But the apparent silence between the United States and China is a serious matter for the global economy.Markets are fixated on the mystery of whether back-channel discussions are taking place. Although the two countries have not severed all ties, it does seem that they have gone dark when it comes to conversations about tariffs.“China and the U.S. have not held consultations or negotiations on the issue of tariffs,” Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, said at a news conference last Friday. “The United States should not confuse the public.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Apple quarterly earnings beat Wall Street expectations amid Trump trade policy chaos

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      Apple’s second-quarter financials came in slightly higher than Wall Street’s expectations on Thursday.The tech giant reported revenue of $95.4bn, up more than 4% over last year, and earnings-per-share of $1.65 per share, up more than 7%. Analysts had predicted revenue of $94.5bn and earnings of $1.62. The company, worth $3.2tn, has beaten Wall Street’s expectations for the previous four quarters.Investors have been keeping their eyes on Apple as it prepared to report its financial results . The tech giant has been working to calm nervous analysts after Donald Trump levied sweeping tariffs on countries around the world that are likely to complicate supply chains for consumer electronics. Since the beginning of the year, Apple’s stock has slumped 16%.In early after-hours trading, the company’s stock dropped by more than 5%, likely due to its services division reporting revenue that missed Wall Street’s expectations, despite growth over last year. The division covers iCloud subscriptions and revenue from various licensing deals. Sales in China also missed estimates.Apple’s CEO, Tim Cook, remained positive, however, saying that the company was reporting “strong quarterly results, including double-digit growth in Services”.The iPhone maker is heavily reliant on Chinese manufacturing for its phones, tablets and laptops. Days after Trump instituted soaring tariffs on China, at one point as high as 245%, the president said he would make an exception for consumer electronics.Cook spoke to senior White House officials around this time, according to the Washington Post. It was after these conversations that Trump announced his exception for consumer electronics. Apple’s stock rose 7% in the days after the announcement.However, it is unclear how lasting the reprieve may be. Howard Lutnick, the US commerce secretary, has called the exemption “temporary”, and even Trump later said on social media that there’s been no “exception”.The president has repeatedly said he wants to see more manufacturing in the US. In February, he met with Cook to discuss investing in US manufacturing. “He’s going to start building,” Trump said after the meeting. “Very big numbers – you have to speak to him. I assume they’re going to announce it at some point.”JP Morgan estimates costs would skyrocket for Apple if it moves production to the US, saying in a note this week that it could “drive a 30% price increase in the near-term, assuming a 20% tariff on China”. JP Morgan and other analysts have said Apple could continue to move more of its manufacturing to India, which only faces a 10% tariff.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionApple chartered jets to airlift some $2bn worth of iPhones from India to the US earlier this month to boost inventory in anticipation of price hikes from Trump’s tariffs and panic-buying by worried consumers. This comes as investors have expressed concerned about decreasing iPhone sales in China, the world’s biggest smartphone market. During its last earnings in January, Apple reported that iPhone sales fell by 11.1% in China in the first quarter and missed Wall Street’s expectations for iPhone revenue.In the short term, however, analysts say the tariff confusion could benefit Apple with people panic-buying its products in fear that prices will rise. “What remains to be seen in the longer term is how much of any increased cost will be passed on to consumers,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, principal analyst for Forrester. “And if [consumers] will absorb these price increases without pulling back on demand for Apple products.” More

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      U.N. Orders Agencies to Find Budget Cuts, Including via Staff Moves From N.Y.

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      The instructions from the office of Secretary General António Guterres were reviewed by The New York Times and came after President Trump ordered a review of U.S. funding to the agency.The United Nations, anticipating that President Trump will slash U.S. contributions to the global body, has told its departments to draw up plans for budget cuts, including through staff relocations from New York and Geneva to less-expensive cities.The instructions — outlined in a two-page memo dated April 25 that was reviewed by The New York Times — were sent from Secretary General António Guterres’s office to the heads of all agencies that report directly to him. The memo set a May 15 deadline for all proposals so that they could be added to the 2026 budget.“Your objective is to identify as many functions as possible that could be relocated to existing lower-cost locations,” the memo reads, “or otherwise reduced or abolished if they are duplicative or no longer viable.”In February, President Trump signed an executive order calling for a review of the overall U.S. funding and ties to the U.N. He withdrew the United States from several U.N. organizations, including those dealing with human rights, women’s reproductive rights, climate change, Palestinian aid and global health. In his first term, he also reduced U.S. contributions to peacekeeping efforts.Three senior U.N. officials said on Tuesday that the drastic, cost-cutting measures laid out in the memo had caught the agency’s departments by surprise and went beyond what they had expected. The officials, who requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said the directive was largely viewed as a way for the U.N. to brace for potential additional cuts by Mr. Trump and to proactively insulate it from the financial blow.But the U.N. officials said the budget cuts were ordered only partly in response to Mr. Trump’s moves. The directive comes as the U.N. is adjusting to a host of financial problems, they said, from the withdrawal and reduction in financial contributions by major donors like the United States and Europe to a cash-flow crisis caused by member states’ not paying their annual dues on time and in full.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      US treasury secretary says ‘there is a path’ with China over tariff negotiations

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      The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, said “there is a path” to an agreement with China over tariffs after he had interactions with his Chinese counterparts last week in Washington.“I had interaction with my Chinese counterparts, but it was more on the traditional things like financial stability, global economic early warnings,” Bessent told ABC News’s This Week on Sunday, explaining that he had spoken to the Chinese during International Monetary Fund meetings in Washington. “I don’t know if President Trump has spoken with President Xi,” he added.On Friday, Donald Trump asserted in an interview that tariff negotiations were under way with China, comments he repeated on his way to Rome to attend the funeral of Pope Francis, but were later denied by China’s foreign ministry, which said the US “should stop creating confusion”.A day later, China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, said Beijing abides by international rules on US-imposed tariffs and would seek solidarity with other countries.“Certain countries adhere to their own priorities, engage in bullying pressure and coercive transactions, and provoke trade wars for no reason, exposing their extreme egoism,” Wang said on the sidelines of a regional meeting in Kazakhstan.On Sunday, Bessent attempted to weave through the conflicting signals over what progress was being made to de-escalate a trade war threatening to sap global growth.“The Chinese will see this high tariff level is unsustainable for their business,” he said. He added that Beijing’s denial that negotiations are ongoing was for a Chinese audience.“I think they’re playing to a different audience,” Bessent said. “We have a process in place and, again, I just believe these Chinese tariffs are unsustainable.“The first path will be, again, a de-escalation, which I think the Chinese are going to have to have. Then I think there can be an agreement in principle, these 17 or 18 important trade deals that we’re negotiating.”But Bessent warned that “a trade deal can take months” and said negotiations with other significant US trading partners were progressing. “Some of those are moving along very well, especially the – with the Asian countries,” he said, praising Trump’s negotiating strategy.“In game theory it’s called strategic uncertainty,” he said. “So, you’re not going to tell the person on the other side of the negotiation where you’re going to end up. And nobody’s better at creating this leverage than President Trump.”The treasury secretary’s comments come as top US retailers have reportedly warned the White House that tariffs will cause empty store shelves and price hikes within weeks.Bloomberg reported that Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein raised US prices of its products from dresses to kitchenware on Friday ahead of imminent tariffs on small parcels. The average price for the top 100 products in the beauty and health category increased by 51%, and more than 30% for home and kitchen products and toys, including a 377% increase in the price of a 10-piece set of kitchen towels.Trump predicted on Sunday that tariffs would ultimately benefit US taxpayers and boost employment. “When Tariffs cut in, many people’s Income Taxes will be substantially reduced, maybe even completely eliminated,” Trump wrote in a Truth Social post.“Focus will be on people making less than $200,000 a year. Also, massive numbers of jobs are already being created, with new plants and factories currently being built or planned.” He called it a “bonanza” for Americans and said “the external service is happening”.Separately on Sunday, US agriculture secretary Brooke Rollins said the US was holding daily conversations with China over tariffs. “Every day we are in conversation with China, along with those other 99, 100 countries that have come to the table,” Rollins said on CNN’s State of the Union.Rollins said the president was prepared to bail out American farmers if the trade war continues squeezing commodity exports, particularly soybean and pork sales to China.“First of all, the prayer is that that doesn’t need to happen – but secondly, if it does, for the short term, just as in Trump 1, we are preparing for that,” Rollins said.Rollins said it could take months before it is known whether a bail-out is needed.“I don’t think we’re going to need it, but if we do, it will be there,” Rollins said. More

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      Trump administration investigating California university over foreign gifts

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      The Trump administration launched an investigation into the University of California, Berkeley, on Friday centered on foreign funding, making it the latest university to be targeted by the federal government.The investigation revives criticism from several years ago about the university’s partnership with China’s Tsinghua University. It comes after Donald Trump earlier this week signed a series of executive orders focused on universities that he views as liberal adversaries to his political agenda.One order called for harder enforcement of Section 117, a federal law requiring colleges to disclose foreign gifts and contracts valued at $250,000 or more.The Department of Education’s office of general counsel will investigate “UC Berkeley’s apparent failure to fully and accurately disclose significant funding received from foreign sources,” education secretary Linda McMahon said in a statement.UC Berkeley denied the government’s claims, saying that for the last two years “UC Berkeley has been cooperating with federal inquiries regarding 117 reporting issues, and will continue to do so.”The department cited media reports from 2023 about UC Berkeley failing to disclose “hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from a foreign government” but didn’t mention the country.On May 2023, the Daily Beast reported that UC Berkeley failed to report it got $220m from the Chinese government to build a joint Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute (TBSI), which UC Berkeley and Tsinghua University opened in 2014 in the city of Shenzhen to focus on “strategic emerging industries”, according to the institute’s website.Last year, a report by the Republican members of the House select committee on the Chinese Communist party found that US tax dollars have contributed to China’s technological advancement and military modernization when American researchers worked with their Chinese peers in areas such as hypersonic weapons, artificial intelligence, nuclear technology and semiconductor technology.In response to the report, UC Berkeley said Berkeley’s researchers “engage only in research whose results are always openly disseminated around the world” and the school was “not aware of any research by Berkeley faculty at TBSI conducted for any other purpose”. The university also said then it would unwind its partnership.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe university said on Friday it’s no longer affiliated with TBSI.Last week, the Department of Education demanded records from Harvard over foreign financial ties spanning the past decade, accusing the school of filing “incomplete and inaccurate disclosures”. Trump’s administration is sparring with Harvard over the university’s refusal to accept a list of demands over its handling of pro-Palestinian protests as well as its diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. More