AUTOMAKERS
Rivals closing in on Tesla
Daimler AG, BMW AG and Volkswagen AG are closing in and might pass Tesla Inc in the electric automaking industry, based on a ranking that factors strategy, battery technology, culture, supplier networks, partnerships and financial performance into an overall score. Tesla should remain No. 1 next year, according to the forecast by PA Consulting Group, but by 2021, Tesla will fall to seventh place, it said. By then, Daimler would be in the lead, followed by BMW, the Renault Nissan Mitsubishi alliance and VW. Production issues with the Model 3 and an uncertain profit outlook were factors in the lower ranking for Tesla, PA Consulting said.
MACROECONOMICS
Singapore growth slows
Singapore’s economy expanded at a slower pace than forecast in the second quarter, clouding the outlook for the export-reliant city state at a time when global trade risks are rising. GDP rose at a seasonally adjusted, annualized rate of 1 percent from the prior three months, according to preliminary data from the Singaporean Ministry of Trade and Industry yesterday. The performance is weakest since a contraction in the first quarter of last year, data showed. GDP expanded 3.8 percent from a year earlier, compared with a median estimate of 4.1 percent, the ministry said.
MACROECONOMICS
Powell warns on tariffs
US Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell gave an upbeat assessment of the US economy, but said that a sustained period of high tariffs on a wide variety of imports could be harmful to growth. “The economy’s in a really good place,” Powell said on Thursday in an interview on American Public Media’s Marketplace program, adding that unemployment was at its lowest level in 20 years, while acknowledging the risk posed by escalating trade disputes. Should those disputes result in “high tariffs on a lot of products and a lot of traded goods and services” that “could be a negative for our economy,” he said. Powell added that inflation has gradually moved up.
EUROZONE
Bulgaria closer to joining
Bulgaria, the EU’s poorest country, on Thursday moved a step closer to joining the euro. After a meeting of eurozone finance ministers in Brussels, the European Commission and the European Central Bank (ECB) said an evaluation could be completed in about a year. “The European Commission welcomes Bulgaria’s efforts to join the eurozone,” European Commission Vice President for the Euro and Social Dialogue Valdis Dombrovskis said. “We might expect the ECB to complete its overall assessment in around a year,” members of the eurozone added in a statement.
FINANCE
Moryoussef guilty of rigging
Former Barclays PLC trader Philippe Moryoussef was in his native France when a London jury found him guilty of a conspiracy to rig an interest-rate benchmark that influences trillions of dollars of pensions and mortgages. He had left London days before the trial began in April. The jury took four days to find Moryoussef guilty, bringing seven years of investigations toward an end. He became the seventh person to be found guilty of interest-rate manipulation in the UK. Barclays was among banks that paid about US$9 billion in fines. Still, the UK Serious Fraud Office cannot be sure Moryoussef will ever end up in prison.
RECYCLE: Taiwan would aid manufacturers in refining rare earths from discarded appliances, which would fit the nation’s circular economy goals, minister Kung said Taiwan would work with the US and Japan on a proposed cooperation initiative in response to Beijing’s newly announced rare earth export curbs, Minister of Economic Affairs Kung Ming-hsin (龔明鑫) said yesterday. China last week announced new restrictions requiring companies to obtain export licenses if their products contain more than 0.1 percent of Chinese-origin rare earths by value. US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent on Wednesday responded by saying that Beijing was “unreliable” in its rare earths exports, adding that the US would “neither be commanded, nor controlled” by China, several media outlets reported. Japanese Minister of Finance Katsunobu Kato yesterday also
Taiwan’s rapidly aging population is fueling a sharp increase in homes occupied solely by elderly people, a trend that is reshaping the nation’s housing market and social fabric, real-estate brokers said yesterday. About 850,000 residences were occupied by elderly people in the first quarter, including 655,000 that housed only one resident, the Ministry of the Interior said. The figures have nearly doubled from a decade earlier, Great Home Realty Co (大家房屋) said, as people aged 65 and older now make up 20.8 percent of the population. “The so-called silver tsunami represents more than just a demographic shift — it could fundamentally redefine the
China Airlines Ltd (CAL, 中華航空) said it expects peak season effects in the fourth quarter to continue to boost demand for passenger flights and cargo services, after reporting its second-highest-ever September sales on Monday. The carrier said it posted NT$15.88 billion (US$517 million) in consolidated sales last month, trailing only September last year’s NT$16.01 billion. Last month, CAL generated NT$8.77 billion from its passenger flights and NT$5.37 billion from cargo services, it said. In the first nine months of this year, the carrier posted NT$154.93 billion in cumulative sales, up 2.62 percent from a year earlier, marking the second-highest level for the January-September
Businesses across the global semiconductor supply chain are bracing themselves for disruptions from an escalating trade war, after China imposed curbs on rare earth mineral exports and the US responded with additional tariffs and restrictions on software sales to the Asian nation. China’s restrictions, the most targeted move yet to limit supplies of rare earth materials, represent the first major attempt by Beijing to exercise long-arm jurisdiction over foreign companies to target the semiconductor industry, threatening to stall the chips powering the artificial intelligence (AI) boom. They prompted US President Donald Trump on Friday to announce that he would impose an additional