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Gt up to date with what's moving the global markets this morning.
(Bloomberg) --
The White House holds off on making a decision on Huawei. Trade friction dampens sentiment after a strong Wall Street session. And climate change is threatening the world’s food supply. Here are some of the things people in markets are talking about today.
Huawei on Hold
The White House is holding off on a decision about licenses required for American companies to do business with Huawei, after China said it was halting purchases of U.S. farming goods, according to people familiar with the matter. American businesses require a special license to supply goods to Huawei after the U.S. added the Chinese telecommunications giant to a trade blacklist in May over national security concerns. In the past week tensions have escalated further as Trump said he would impose a 10% tariff on $300 billion of Chinese imports as of Sept. 1 and his Treasury Department formally labeled China a currency manipulator.
Futures Fall
The resurfacing trade tensions dampened sentiment after a strong Wall Street session, with U.S. equity futures falling and the yen climbing. Contracts on the S&P 500 fell 0.7% as Bloomberg reported the White House pause on Huawei. Asian futures had earlier pointed higher after an almost 2% gain in the S&P 500. Global equities are recovering from Monday’s plunge — the biggest fall since February 2018 — though concern remains that China may continue to allow its currency to weaken.
Unprecedented Access
China is considering the biggest changes to its futures market since 2015. The proposals would give global investors unprecedented access, remove a ban on unhedged bets against the market and allow foreigners to trade equity-index and commodity futures without an approved quota, people familiar with the situation said. New products, including futures on the MSCI China A Index, are also on the agenda. Here's our QuickTake on China’s hedging tools.
‘Thuggish Regime’
The U.S. State Department’s spokeswoman branded China a “thuggish regime” for releasing personal information on American diplomat Julie Eadeh, who met with protesters in Hong Kong, escalating a war of words over demonstrations that have rocked the city for some two months. “I don’t think that leaking an American diplomat’s private information — pictures, names of their children — I don’t think that that’s a formal protest, that is what a thuggish regime would do,” Morgan Ortagus said at a State Department briefing after the Communist Party-linked Ta Kung Pao newspaper published a photo of Eadeh meeting protest leaders. China’s foreign ministry has previously said the ongoing unrest in Hong Kong was “the creation of the U.S.”
Food Insecurity
Climate change is putting the world's food supply at risk. With more extreme weather, stable food production will increasingly be imperiled, threatening the poorest populations first, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change said. In addition, the report notes, the push to use more land to produce crops and lumber is eliminating natural wetlands and reducing forests that capture greenhouse gases. Crop yields are already falling in some areas, deserts are spreading and plant diversity is waning.
What we’ve been reading
This is what’s caught our eye over the last 24 hours.
- UBS mulls investment bank overhaul with hundreds of jobs at risk
- How tear gas became the new normal on the streets of Hong Kong
- Booming travel is transforming Asian airports into mini-cities
- Borneo forest favored for Indonesia's new $33 billion capital
- Modi promises a new era in Kashmir after scrapping autonomy
- The non-weirdness of negative interest rates
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Alexandria Arnold at abaca3@bloomberg.net, Alex Millson
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