Lighthizer's Reality Check, Powell Put, Asia's Exports: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to Thursday, Europe. Here’s the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help get your day started:

• Donald Trump’s top trade negotiator is dialing back expectations for a sweeping trade deal with China. Robert Lighthizer said the U.S. is pushing for a deal that includes “significant structural changes” to China’s economic model
• Meantime, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, when asked if there’s a “Powell Put” in financial markets, said the Fed will pay attention to financial market volatility if it threatens economic stability
• The race to succeed Mario Draghi as president of the European Central Bank looks increasingly like a Franco-Finnish affair, with a Bloomberg survey of economists showing two officials from each nation among the top four contenders. Erkki Liikanen, former chief of the Finnish central bank, remains in the lead and just ahead of France’s central bank Governor Francois Villeroy de Galhau
• Philip Lane, the governor of the Central Bank of Ireland, is set to be the next chief economist of the ECB. He is considered a monetary policy dove, but there’s more to his views on how the euro area should function, says Bloomberg Opinion’s Leonid Bershidsky
• Greece has come a long way from its pre-crisis reputation as a tax evaders’ paradise, but it’s now got a problem collecting taxmen
• Confidence among U.K. businesses plunged to a seven-year low this month and consumers remained pessimistic about the economic outlook as lawmakers failed to provide further clarity about the nation’s exit from the European Union
• Asia’s export powerhouses remain dogged by weak global demand as the latest manufacturing and production gauges from China, Japan and South Korea show few signs of rebounding
• South Korea’s central bank left its key interest rate unchanged as the outlook for Asia’s fourth-largest economy weakens amid falling exports, soft jobs growth and waning inflation
• The Reserve Bank of Australia’s estimates of the exchange rate’s fair value show the currency last year fell further than the central bank expected as the economy slowed

To contact the reporter on this story: Enda Curran in Hong Kong at ecurran8@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Malcolm Scott at mscott23@bloomberg.net, Karthikeyan Sundaram, Devidutta Tripathy

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