Back in 2009, when China’s economy was expanding at about twice today’s pace, a little-known private firm made a quiet bet on uncharted territory: Indonesia. The company was on a quest: to secure nickel, a vital industrial metal used in stainless steel production and, increasingly, to power advanced batteries. That bet proved lucrative. By leveraging Indonesia’s vast nickel reserves – the world’s largest – and securing greater control over upstream supplies, Tsingshan Group has grown into a...
A major new bridge linking Canada and the United States at Detroit, Michigan opened on Monday to lorries, cars and other vehicles, the climax of a years-long project that lately had been bruised a bit by international politics. Descendants of Gordie Howe, the hockey legend whose name is on the bridge, were among the first to cross over the Detroit River, which separates Detroit from Windsor, Ontario. The span, which was built by Canada at a cost of C$6.4 billion (US$4.5 billion), now becomes a...
China’s Ministry of Commerce has objected to Washington’s latest tariff on the country’s goods but signalled it will hold off on retaliation for now, noting the 12.5 per cent duty keeps the United States within the ceiling that the Trump administration promised in earlier talks. Washington was manipulating the issue of forced labour, the ministry said in a statement on Monday, calling the Section 301 investigation and the subsequent tariffs “a textbook act of unilateralism and protectionism”. It...
Hong Kong exports rose 53.4 per cent year on year in June, their sharpest increase in 42 years, to a record HK$641.1 billion (US$81.7 billion) on strong overseas demand for AI-related products. Provisional figures released by the Census and Statistics Department on Monday showed that the total value of exports climbed to HK$641.1 billion last month, after a 40.8 per cent surge in May. The last time exports rose more than 50 per cent in a month was in March 1987, and the last time they...
One morning in February 1784, a converted privateer called the Empress of China sailed out of New York harbour. It was bound for a country almost no one aboard had ever seen – China, then ruled by the Qing dynasty. Six months later, it dropped anchor at Canton, the only port where the Qing government allowed Western maritime trade. At the time, the Declaration of Independence was less than a decade old, and the Treaty of Paris recognising American independence had been signed less than a year...
In lawsuit on Friday, two small businesses said latest round of tariffs on 60 countries needs to be legally justified.
Countries accounting for almost all of the US's trade have been hit with tariffs between 10 and 12.5 percent.
The tariffs target around 60 trading partners over claims they failed to properly stop forced labour.
China’s durian imports rose 47 per cent, year on year, in the first half of 2026, with Thailand and Malaysia posting particularly strong gains, according to customs data, as Southeast Asian exporters offloaded a glut of the fruit that had sparked a price drop. Thailand exported nearly US$3.79 billion worth of the pungent spiky fruit shipped to China in the first half of 2026, the Chinese customs data showed, taking an 81 per cent share of the market. Thai shipments reached US$2.56 billion in the...
Canada's dairy supply management system is in the spotlight after the US president singled it out as one of three main irritants used to justify new tariffs.
Chile wants to widen the group of countries buying its copper and attract about US$100 billion in mining investment over the next decade, its foreign minister said on Wednesday, in the most explicit move yet by the new government in Santiago to reduce its exposure to Chinese demand. “The market is highly concentrated and we need to broaden the number of places that buy our copper,” Francisco Perez Mackenna said at a Bloomberg summit in Singapore, part of a tour through the Asia-Pacific. He said...
Washington is still not receiving sufficient critical mineral exports from China, US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said on Wednesday, even as top American and Chinese officials met to finalise key economic deliverables for President Xi Jinping’s expected visit to the White House. “We are getting a flow of critical minerals from China. It’s not as much as we would want. It’s not at the pace we would want, but we are getting them,” Greer said during his testimony before the Senate Finance...
Tiruppur Exporters’ Association optimistic about getting orders from overseas buyers who visited the fair
Dutch ban on Israeli goods from occupied territory comes as efforts to implement EU-wide sanctions remain stalled.
Delegates representing a United States congressional advisory panel are making their first trip to China in seven years to investigate how the two countries’ economic and trade relationship affects national security. The US-China Economic and Security Review Commission has requested meetings with Chinese government officials, academics and industry leaders in key technology sectors such as artificial intelligence, biotechnology and robotics. It said it would also meet with US diplomats and...
European policymakers have watched Chinese carmakers roll in like a slow but unstoppable tide over the past few years: affordable, polished and threatening one of the continent’s proudest industrial legacies. Many have warned about the dismantling of their automotive prides following the new China shock. A crown jewel of Europe’s industrial output, the automotive sector represents directly and indirectly a total of more than 13 million jobs in the EU. It was no accident that electric vehicles...
The Hong Kong government on Friday welcomed the Trump administration’s decision to allow a national emergency declaration concerning the city to expire, a potentially significant reversal of US policy imposed after Beijing enacted the national security law in 2020. The declaration, which underpinned Washington’s decision to end Hong Kong’s preferential treatment in areas including trade and export controls, expired this week after US President Donald Trump did not renew it for another year. The...
The External Affairs Minister is on a two-day visit to Belgium from July 14 to 15 to participate in the 3rd India-EU Trade and Technology Council meeting and interact with his EU and Belgian counterparts in Brussels
As the United States marks the 250th anniversary of its founding, it confronts a new world order dominated by its relationship with China. In this wide-ranging series, we examine the pressure points and possibilities in those ties, from hard tech to soft power. In this article, Sylvia Ma examines the numerous financial links between the two economies that make a true decoupling a difficult affair. On a landmark visit to Beijing in 1986, the New York Stock Exchange chairman at the time, John...
There is something odd about the debate on China’s “overcapacity”. Europe says the world needs cheaper and faster clean energy deployment, yet complains when China produces the solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles that make this possible. Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank specialising in economic policy, recently published a working paper, “To what extent can green infrastructure investment mitigate China’s clean-energy overcapacity?” It argues that China’s industrial...
Ambassador to China Vikram Doraiswami made a pitch for greater Indian exports to China, especially in areas such as pharmaceuticals where India is globally competitive
Chinese firms not only operate, finance or hold stakes in about one third of all ports in Africa, but Beijing now also controls the software, automation and artificial intelligence (AI) tools that run the infrastructure. And that reach extends well beyond the docks, with Beijing financing and operating the road, rail and warehousing networks connected to these ports and other maritime projects across the continent, closely intertwining African trade with China’s own trading systems. These are...
Speaking at the Board of Trade meeting, the Commerce Minister said the target was achievable as other countries were keen to trade with India
Germany’s ruling coalition has pledged to take a tougher line on defending trade at the continental level, signalling a potential shift by a country long seen as the European Union’s main brake on stronger action against China. The pledge formed part of a 34-point package to revive Germany’s ailing economy that German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s coalition agreed to on Thursday. While the document did not mention China, German Finance Minister Lars Klingbeil said the government was adopting a...
In an unexpected move, Boston traded the All-Star guard to division rivals Philadelphia for Paul George and draft picks.
UK Trade Secretary Peter Kyle is seeking to boost UK services exports to China as he hosts a delegation from the country on Tuesday. Peter Kyle and China’s Commerce Minister Wang Wentao will jointly host the 15th UK–China Joint Economic and Trade Commission at Mansion House in London. They will launch a “trade booster” initiative designed to support UK businesses expanding their exports into China during the visit. Brompton Bikes and HSBC are among the British businesses attending, while firms...
Setting up a new regional chamber of commerce will “fulfil a long-felt need” to bridge the gap between the Greater Bay Area and Asean, with Hong Kong acting as a “natural connector”, the business group’s inaugural chairman has said. But given existing agreements and bilateral relations between the city and individual member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, analysts said the economic benefits introduced by the new chamber were likely to be more modest than dramatic. The Asean...
The Philippines is uniquely positioned to serve as a gateway for Greater Bay Area businesses into Southeast Asia, the country’s trade secretary said on Tuesday, as she outlined Manila’s push to promote a pro-investment environment. Speaking at the South China Morning Post’s GBA-Asean Summit 2026, Cristina Aldeguer-Roque urged investors to view the Philippines as a springboard into the region and to tap into the country’s young, digitally fluent workforce. “We are a maritime, demographic and...