Microsoft has emerged as the winner from Big Tech’s first earnings of the new Trump term, with the software giant poised to regain its crown from Apple as the most valuable public company as investors bet it is best placed to navigate the current trade war. Despite widespread pessimism ahead of its results, Microsoft posted record revenue at its Azure cloud computing unit, crediting its partnership with OpenAI and demand for its artificial intelligence-infused software. Those comments provided succour to investors amid fears of a US recession and concerns that vast expenditures on AI are unjustified. This text has been highlighted 8 times by other subscribers! Add to highlights Apple and Amazon were the major losers, with the iPhone maker budgeting at least $900mn in extra quarterly costs from tariffs, while the ecommerce giant cut its outlook and warned of higher prices and plunging consumer spending. Combined, they were set to lose roughly $190bn in market value based on after-hou...
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Brussels wants to increase purchases of US goods by €50bn to address the “problem” in the trade relationship, the EU’s top negotiator has said, adding that the bloc is making “certain progress” towards striking a deal. But Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s trade commissioner, suggested in an interview with the Financial Times that the bloc would not accept Washington keeping in place 10 per cent tariffs on its goods as a fair resolution to trade talks. Steep tariffs are due to be imposed on the EU and multiple countries in early July, leaving the bloc racing to avoid a full-blown transatlantic trade war. The US and EU had made progress through multiple rounds of in-person and telephone negotiations since President Donald Trump imposed, then paused, 20 per cent tariffs on the bloc, Sefcovic said. He added that “his ambition” was still to strike a “balanced and fair” deal with the White House. Šefčovič said the key argument he was making to US trade representative Jamieson Greer and commerce ...
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Signs of a possible thaw in trade tensions helped drive global markets higher on Friday after Beijing said it was “evaluating” recent overtures from Washington on starting trade talks. China’s commerce ministry said the US had recently “conveyed messages to China through various channels, expressing a desire to engage in discussions”. “China is currently evaluating this,” the ministry spokesperson said. Global equities rallied, with Taiwan’s Taiex climbing 2.7 per cent, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index rising 1.8 per cent and Europe’s Stoxx 600 index gaining 1 per cent. S&P 500 futures climbed 0.5 per cent. The Wall Street benchmark has been buoyed by strong Big Tech earnings this week and is on the brink of erasing all of its losses since Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariff blitz on April 2 sent global markets into a tailspin. “The peak of uncertainty may be over,” said Wee Khoon Chong, a senior strategist at BNY. Asian currencies rallied against the dollar on signs of easing...
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“You aren’t going to like what comes after America,” the great bard Leonard Cohen famously wrote. Perhaps he is being proved right — at least this is not the America we thought we knew. (“I’ve seen the future,” Cohen also sang, “it is murder.”) Guessing the endgame of President Donald Trump’s policies is a fool’s errand. But it would be a fool, too, who didn’t try to prepare for a world from which the US has withdrawn — economically, militarily and diplomatically. So here in Free Lunch, I want to start an occasional series of pieces on how the world, and in particular (the rest of) the liberal democratic west, might cope with a US-sized hole in its heart. Send me your thoughts at freelunch@ft.com. My thoughts today are about international governance — where I bring, I hope, some good news, at any rate better than what Cohen would have us fear. The Maga modus operandi in international affairs is now familiar. The polite word for it is bilateralism. More harshly, it’s divide and r...
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Multinational companies are flocking to China’s bond market at a record rate as they try to secure cheaper financing and hedge against deteriorating relations between Beijing and the US. So-called panda bond issuance — renminbi borrowing by overseas companies in mainland Chinese markets — hit Rmb194.8bn ($26.5bn) in 2024, the highest level on record for a full year. In the first quarter of this year it reached Rmb41.6bn, its second-best quarterly issuance since the World Bank and Asian Development Bank sold the first such bonds in 2005. Mercedes-Benz, HSBC and Trafigura are among the foreign groups that have driven the wave of fundraising. Many companies are keen to take advantage of Chinese interest rates that are much lower than those elsewhere, for instance in the US and Europe. The issuance marks a shift in strategy by global companies to issue debt for their China subsidiaries locally, rather than raising funds abroad and then transferring the money to their Chinese unit. Analy...