UNITED STATES
Trade talks work remains
“Significant work remains” in trade talks with China, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said on Friday, adding that officials from both nations would be in continuous contact to resolve outstanding issues. Sanders said topics the two parties discussed included the protection of intellectual property, non-tariff barriers to trade, agriculture and enforcement. She described the negotiations as “productive” and said the two sides made progress on “numerous key issues.” President Donald Trump on Friday said talks with Beijing were making progress.
ECONOMY
Argentina review approved
The executive board of the IMF on Friday approved its third review of a US$56 billion IMF-supported program for Argentina, giving the country access to an additional US$11 billion. That brings the total amount approved from the IMF since June last year to US$39 billion. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said the program is generating results and there are signs of a gradual recovery because the recession has bottomed. The IMF in January predicted that the Argentine economy would contract 1.7 percent this year.
ICELAND
Deal eases rates constraints
The central bank now has more scope to cut interest rates as a result of this week’s agreement between workers and employers, despite an “unfortunate” clause in the deal that ties planned pay hikes to monetary policy, bank Governor Mar Gudmundsson said. “The break-even inflation rate in the market has now slumped, the exchange rate has been strengthening and our leeway to lower interest rates has greatly increased,” Gudmundsson said by phone in Reykjavik on Friday. The island nation in the North Atlantic is reeling from the collapse of Wow Air and is facing a potential contraction in GDP after years of fast-paced growth.
ENERGY
Petroleo sells pipeline
Petroleo Brasileiro SA agreed to sell its 90 percent stake in its natural gas pipeline unit to France’s Engie SA and Canadian pension fund Caisse de Depot et Placement du Quebec for US$8.6 billion. Engie and Caisse prevailed after multiple rounds of bidding for the unit, known as TAG, beating out Macquarie Group Ltd, and a joint bid from EIG Global Energy Partners and Mubadala Development Co. It is the biggest-ever single asset sale for Petrobras, whose new chief executive officer has sought to speed divestitures that began years ago, when the state-run energy giant briefly became the world’s most indebted oil company.
MINING
BHP job cuts expected
BHP Group Ltd will cut jobs in a continuing effort to reduce bureaucracy under a previously foreshadowed streamlining strategy, a person familiar with the matter said yesterday. It was unclear how many jobs would be lost or when the reductions will begin, the person said. The changes come less than six weeks after the mining giant announced a major shake-up of its senior management, with the promotion of three women to key positions on its executive leadership board and the appointment of a chief transformation officer.
NEW IMPORTS: Car dealer PG Union Corp said it would consider introducing US-made models such as the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Stellantis’ RAM 1500 to Taiwan Tesla Taiwan yesterday said that it does not plan to cut its car prices in the wake of Washington and Taipei signing the Agreement on Reciprocal Trade on Thursday to eliminate tariffs on US-made cars. On the other hand, Mercedes-Benz Taiwan said it is planning to lower the price of its five models imported from the US after the zero tariff comes into effect. Tesla in a statement said it has no plan to adjust the prices of the US-made Model 3, Model S and Model X as tariffs are not the only factor the automaker uses to determine pricing policies. Tesla said
OpenAI has warned US lawmakers that its Chinese rival DeepSeek (深度求索) is using unfair and increasingly sophisticated methods to extract results from leading US artificial intelligence (AI) models to train the next generation of its breakthrough R1 chatbot, a memo reviewed by Bloomberg News showed. In the memo, sent on Thursday to the US House of Representatives Select Committee on China, OpenAI said that DeepSeek had used so-called distillation techniques as part of “ongoing efforts to free-ride on the capabilities developed by OpenAI and other US frontier labs.” The company said it had detected “new, obfuscated methods” designed to evade OpenAI’s defenses
China’s top chipmaker has warned that breakaway spending on artificial intelligence (AI) chips is bringing forward years of future demand, raising the risk that some data centers could sit idle. “Companies would love to build 10 years’ worth of data center capacity within one or two years,” Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC, 中芯) cochief executive officer Zhao Haijun (趙海軍) said yesterday on a call with analysts. “As for what exactly these data centers will do, that hasn’t been fully thought through.” Moody’s Ratings projects that AI-related infrastructure investment would exceed US$3 trillion over the next five years, as developers pour eye-watering sums
Bank of America Corp nearly doubled its forecast for the nation’s economic growth this year, adding to a slew of upgrades even after a rip-roaring last year propelled by demand for artificial intelligence (AI). The firm lifted its projection to 8 percent from 4.5 percent on “relentless global demand” for the hardware that Taiwanese companies make, according to a note dated yesterday by analysts including Xiaoqing Pi (皮曉青). Taiwan’s GDP expanded 8.63 percent last year, the fastest pace since 2010. The increase “reflects our sustained optimism over Taiwan’s technology driven expansion and is reinforced by several recent developments,” including a more stable currency,
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