Mnuchin Dollar Fear, China to Honor, Fiscal Cold Turkey: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) -- Happy Friday, Asia. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help get you through to the weekend:

• Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin emerges as the chief opponent of the Trump administration’s increased reliance on economic sanctions in John Bolton’s new book, worried that an over-reliance on such measures will weaken the global primacy of the dollar
• U.S. Secretary of State Michael Pompeo said China’s top foreign policy official committed in a meeting this week to honor all of his nation’s commitments under its first-phase trade deal
• Reserve Bank board member Ian Harper urged Australia’s government to come up with a “tapering arrangement” for its stimulus programs that are due to end in September, warning a sharp cutoff would damage the recovery and potentially drive unemployment even higher
• Raphael Bostic, the first Black Fed president in the central bank’s 106-year history, has rarely talked about race in the three years he’s run the Atlanta Fed. But recent events changed that
• Applications for unemployment benefits in the U.S. fell less than forecast last week, showing only gradual improvement from the worst of the pandemic-related layoffs
• France’s central bank governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau has added a new shape to the lexicon economists are using to describe the economic recovery from the coronavirus: Bird wing
• The Bank of England expanded its bond-buying program to counter the coronavirus slump, but kept some of its powder dry should the labor market worsen more than expected. The BOE also said it will remove portraits of former governors linked to the slave trade
• The current generation of students is at risk of losing $10 trillion in earnings over time due to pandemic-related school closures, the World Bank said
• The Swiss National Bank said aggressive foreign exchange interventions remain its main tool for pushing back against the appreciation in the franc caused by the coronavirus pandemic
• Here’s a wrap of Bloomberg Economics’s insights and reacts across the world, including China’s 2020 growth tracking at 2.1%
• The virus is winning. That much is certain more than six months into a shape-shifting pandemic that’s killed 450,000 people worldwide, is gaining ground globally and has disrupted lives from Wuhan to Sao Paulo
• President Donald Trump said the U.S. could pursue a “complete decoupling from China” in response to unspecified conditions, his most forceful statement yet on the souring ties with Beijing

©2020 Bloomberg L.P.