GLOBAL FX-
U.S. President Donald Trump, responding to a surge of illegal immigrants across the southern border, vowed on Thursday to impose a tariff on all goods coming from Mexico, starting at 5% and ratcheting much higher until the flow of people ceases.Trump’s move dramatically escalates his battle to control a wave of tens of thousands of asylum seekers, including many Central American families fleeing poverty and violence, that has swelled alongside his promises to make it harder to get U.S. refuge and his efforts to build a wall on the Mexican border.
The suspension of a U.S. trade preference programme with India is a “done deal,” a senior State Department official said on Thursday as Prime Minister Narendra Modi began his second term.President Donald Trump announced in March he would end India’s access to the decades-old Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) trade programme over what the U.S. said was lack of access to India’s market. The programme allows emerging countries to export goods to the United States without paying duties.U.S. law requires the administration to wait 60 days after it notifies Congress of the move before it formally ends India’s participation in the programme. Trump notified Congress of the move in early March.
More than 750,000 European Union citizens have applied to remain living in Britain after it leaves the bloc, interior minister Sajid Javid said on Thursday.The issue of what would happen to the more than 3 million EU nationals living in Britain was one of the first to be tackled in divorce talks with the bloc. Britain has said EU citizens have until at least Dec. 31, 2020 to apply for “settled status” whether or not an exit deal with the EU is approved.Britain is currently due to leave on Oct. 31, but Prime Minister Theresa May is stepping down after failing to get her exit deal approved by parliament and those vying to replace her are divided over whether to seek changes to that deal.“EU citizens are our friends, neighbours and colleagues who contribute so much to this country. Whatever the outcome of Brexit we want them to stay,” Javid said in a statement, adding that the scheme had so far seen 750,000 applications.
Russian President Vladimir Putin and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will hold a summit meeting on June 29, when Putin visits Japan for a meeting of leaders of the Group of 20 nations, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.Senior officials and political leaders from both countries have held talks frequently in recent months to discuss ways to put an end to an decades-old territorial dispute and conclude a peace treaty.
Malaysia’s exports in April are likely to have eased for the third successive month, declining at a faster annual pace than in March, poll showed on Friday.The median forecast among the 11 economists surveyed was for exports to fall 1% in April from a year earlier, quicker than the 0.5% decline recorded in March.Individual estimates, however, ranged widely between an annual decline of 9% and a rise of 1.9%.Imports were also seen falling 0.2% year-on-year in April, marginally faster than the 0.1% decline in the previous month.
Japan’s household spending was expected to have risen for a fifth straight month in April, poll showed on Friday, offering some relief for policymakers concerned about the impact of global trade frictions on domestic consumption.Household spending likely grew 2.6% in April from a year earlier, the poll of 15 economists showed, up from a 2.1% in March. Consumer spending performed poorly in January-March but the long holiday period appeared to have supported the spending in April.
Gold prices inched up on Thursday, having hit a one-week low earlier in the session as investors opted for dollars and U.S. government bonds as a hedge against trade tensions between the United States and China.Spot gold was up 0.2% at $1,281.58 per ounce by 1307 GMT, having fallen to its lowest level since May 23 at $1,274.44 earlier in the session. U.S. gold futures edged 0.1% lower to $1,285.70 an ounce.
Oil prices fell almost 4% to their lowest in over two months on a smaller-than-expected decline in U.S. crude inventories and fears of a global economic slowdown due to the U.S.-China trade war.The Energy Information Administration (EIA) said U.S. crude stockpiles fell nearly 300,000 barrels last week, less than the 900,000-barrel decline analysts forecast in a Reuters poll and well below the 5.3 million-barrel drawdown the American Petroleum Institute (API) reported late Wednesday.The decline last week reduced crude stocks from their highest since July 2017 seen the previous week, but at 476.5 million barrels, they were still about 5% above the five-year average for this time of year.