Barron’s (November 12)
“Germany’s economy, historically the powerhouse of Europe, is going through a rough patch. Its reliance on Russian energy and trade with China will have to be scaled back and new sources of growth found.” The nation’s GDP “declined in the third quarter, bringing down the rest of the euro zone with it,” and the OECD now “expects Germany to be the second worst performer in its group of 30 advanced economies this year, ahead only of Argentina.”
Tags: Argentina, China, Economy, Europe, GDP, Germany, Growth, OECD, Powerhouse, Reliance, Russian energy, Trade, Worst performer
Institutional Investor (October 20)
“Out of 770 institutional investors around the globe that are collectively responsible for $34.7 trillion in assets, 52 percent said in June that as de-globalization accelerates they will try to invest in companies with more localized supply chains, according to an annual study by Schroders.” While “trade and technology continue to cross borders and, generally speaking, the world is still shrinking,” geopolitical tension and war have turned “de-globalization into a megatrend creating winners and losers in business.”
Tags: De-globalization, Geopolitical, Institutional investors, Invest, Localized supply chains, Losers, Megatrend, Responsible, Schroders, Technology, Trade, War, Winners
Bloomberg (August 8)
“China’s trade plunged in July as slowing global demand clouded the outlook for exports, while domestic pressures weighed on imports in a hit to the economic recovery.” Exports (dollar denominated) fell 14.5% while imports decreased 12.4%. Both figures “were worse than what economists polled by Bloomberg had expected.”
Tags: Bloomberg, China, Domestic pressures, Economic recovery, Economists, Exports, Global demand, Imports, Outlook, Plunged, Trade
Economic Times (March 28)
Regulators suspect a single “trade on Deutsche Bank AG’s credit default swaps… fuelled a global selloff on Friday.” The roughly £5 million bet was for swaps on the bank’s junior debt. Likely due to market illiquidity, along with market jitters, the “knock-on effect was a rout that sent banking stocks tumbling, government bonds higher and CDS prices for lenders soaring.”
Tags: Bonds, CDS, Deutsche Bank, Global selloff, Illiquidity, Jitters, Junior debt, Market, Regulators, Rout, Suspect, Trade, Tumbling
Bloomberg (January 17)
“Trade between the US and China is on track to break records, a signal of resilient links between the world’s top economies amid the heated national security rhetoric in Washington and fears of ‘decoupling.’” Data for the first 11 months of implies “imports and exports in 2022 will add up to an all-time high, or at least come very close, when the final report comes out Feb. 7.”
Tags: 2022, China, Decoupling, Exports, Fears, Heated, Imports, National security, Resilient, Rhetoric, Top economies, Trade, U.S.
Bloomberg (November 25)
“Since the Brexit vote in 2016, the UK government is yet to deliver major legislative change with significant benefits for businesses. Instead, companies have had to grapple with higher paperwork costs on trade, a tighter labor market spurred by a reduction in EU migration and a weaker pound increasing import costs. Brexit has also had a political cost of aggravating tensions in Northern Ireland and hurting diplomatic relations with the EU.”
Tags: Benefits, Brexit, Businesses, Costs, EU, Government, Import, Labor market, Migration, Northern Ireland, Paperwork, Pound, Trade, UK, Weaker
Bloomberg (October 12)
“In a fresh sign of Japan’s dysfunctional bond market, the 10-year benchmark failed to trade for a third consecutive session Tuesday, the longest such streak since 1999.”
Tags: 10-year, Benchmark, Consecutive, Dysfunctional bond, Failed, Fresh, Japan, Longest, Market, Sign, Streak, Trade
Earth.Org (August 25)
“Southwest China is battling the worst drought in more than half a century. Rainfall in the Yangtze River Basin is at its lowest since 1961, down 45% from last July.” Some places “have not seen rain in more than two months” and Yangtze water levels “have halved, affecting trade, limiting drinking water supplies, and causing rolling blackouts.”
Tags: 1961, Drinking water, Drought, Halved, Lowest, Rainfall, Rolling blackouts, Southwest China, Trade, Water levels, Worst, Yangtze River Basin
Reuters (May 6)
As criticism mounts, both domestically and overseas, the Chinese Communist Party has come out forcefully to “fight any comment or action that distorted, doubted or repudiated its COVID policy.” It stresses that “relaxing COVID controls… would lead to large-scale infections.” The People’s Daily newspaper even used an editorial to dispute “accusations China’s COVID policy was disrupting global economy and trade.”
Tags: Accusations, CCP, Controls, COVID policy, Criticism, Disrupting, Distorted, Economy, Fight, Global, Infections, People's Daily, Repudiated, Trade
Bloomberg (March 13)
“Trade’s share of global GDP peaked in 2008, and has been falling for the past decade. So the war in Ukraine doesn’t necessarily mark sharp a break in history. But it underlines and will perhaps cement the decline of globalization.”
