Hudson Lockett

China's leaders will be pleased at the immediate reaction to their latest plan to engineer a stock market recovery. The country’s benchmark CSI 300 Index has climbed about 7% since the People’s Bank of China announced a broad package of measures, including rate cuts and stock market support, on Tuesday, taking the gauge into positive territory for the year. But the recovery is likely to fizzle out

An election meant to deliver greater certainty has yielded anything but. The Liberal Democratic Party lost its parliamentary majority in the snap election held on Sunday, called by Shigeru Ishiba soon after becoming prime minister last month, who hoped to minimise gains by the opposition and lock in a firm mandate for his scandal-ridden coalition. Now the opposition Constitutional Democratic Party

Is China choking off its private companies? After more than a decade of increasingly centralised rule under President Xi Jinping, the answer seems clear. The private sector is on the wane due to stringent regulation and policies favouring government-run enterprises over profit-focused entrepreneurs.

Trump has threatened to raise tariffs on all Chinese exports to 60%. Donald Trump | Image: AP Advertisement

Robert Lighthizer. Mike Walz. Marco Rubio. These renowned China hawks are not the names Beijing wants popping up in President-elect Donald Trump’s early cabinet appointments. Markets agree, as the yuan has fallen about 2% against the dollar since Trump’s victory at the polls. Downward pressure will mount if he follows through on threats to raise American tariffs on imports from China to as much as 60%.

The Chinese yuan has fallen about 2% since the election of Donald Trump as president of the United States on Nov. 6. Yuan | Image: Unsplash

Economists had expected Donald Trump’s new tariffs would be reined in by common sense, they were wrong. On Monday evening, the U.S. president-elect pledged across-the-board tariffs of 25% on Mexico and Canada, blaming America’s neighbours for failing to halt flows of illicit drugs and undocumented immigrants across their borders. He also promised a fresh 10% tariff on China, a developer of the chemical ingredients of fentanyl, until flows of the opioid are halted.

Donald Trump on Nov. 25 pledged to impose additional 10% tariffs on Chinese products and 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada.

The battle for control of Japan’s Seven & i is being cheered in Tokyo as evidence of improving efficiencies of the world’s third-largest economy. Officials can hasten a virtuous circle of dealmaking if they make the right next moves.

Chinese leaders are discussing the possibility of letting their currency weaken to blunt the impact of potential U.S. trade tariffs, Reuters reported last week, citing sources. A weaker yuan could pummel currencies across Asia but there could be a silver lining for Governor Kazuo Ueda at the Bank of Japan which meets on Wednesday to decide whether to raise interest rates for the third time this year.