Good morning. Andrew here. Will we get a trade deal this week between the U.S. and China? That’s the current thinking based on optimistic comments from U.S. officials before a possible meeting between President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China. We’ve got the details below. We’re also going deep on the election in Argentina, and the larger implications for U.S. foreign policy. And make sure to take a look at our regular “Global View” feature, which takes the pulse of how international news outlets are reporting and analyzing the biggest headlines. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
A deals spreeGlobal stocks, cryptocurrencies and oil are rallying this morning as investors cheer a potential breakthrough in U.S.-China trade talks, as well as a slew of other potential deals that together signal a major easing of trade war tensions. American and Chinese officials hailed the progress this weekend in reaching a framework agreement that appears to cover a number of contentious issues, including Beijing’s export curbs on rare earth metals, shipping taxes and fentanyl. There was also progress on TikTok. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that China had also committed to again step up purchases of U.S. soybeans, a pullback this year that had rattled American farmers. Investors have heard upbeat comments on trade talks before, only for new trade war threats to emerge from both Washington and Beijing. But this time, President Trump and President Xi Jinping of China are expected to meet on Thursday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, and there are high hopes that the two could sign a more lasting accord. “I think we’re gonna have a successful transaction for both countries,” Trump said as he headed to Japan. This may be the last opportunity for the two economic powers to resolve their differences before bruising new tariffs are set to go into effect in the coming days. Bessent expressed optimism that the U.S. and China could reach a truce to at least delay such levies. Investors are acting as if it’s a done deal. Shares in Nvidia, whose chip exports have been hobbled by a series of trade barriers erected by Washington and Beijing, rallied in premarket trading. And shares of U.S.-listed rare earth miners, including Critical Metals and USA Rare Earth, fell this morning. They had risen in recent weeks on investor hopes that a U.S. policy to shore up the local supply chain would bolster their profits. There were other deals announced, too. The White House said yesterday it would soon finalize a trade deal with Vietnam that would impose a 20 percent tariff on most of the country’s goods. Trump also struck accords with Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand to keep tariffs at 19 percent. And finally, Brazil and the U.S. appear closer to striking an agreement. Trump said his meeting this weekend with President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil went “very well,” prompting hopes that Trump would ease some of the huge levies he has placed on the country. Amid the optimism, there are still big questions on what the deals cover, and what effect they will ultimately have on inflation and global trade.
Novartis announces a $12 billion biotech acquisition bid. Shares in Avidity Biosciences jumped more than 40 percent this morning in premarket trading after Novartis said it would pay $72 a share for the company. The acquisition is a strategic shift for the Novartis C.E.O., Vas Narasimhan, who until now has concentrated on smaller-size deals, as he tries to refill a drug pipeline that will face increasing competition from generics later. Gavin Newsom weighs in on a presidential run. The California governor said he would decide about running for president after the 2026 midterm elections. Newsom, who is in his second term as governor, cannot run for that job again. In other election news, President Trump ruled out running for vice president in the 2028 election, which some supporters have floated as a way to avoid the Constitution’s prohibition on a president being elected more than twice. The police make arrests in the Louvre Museum robbery. After news of the arrests was leaked, the Paris prosecutor said that the arrests in the brazen daylight theft were made on Saturday evening, and that one man was taken into custody at the Charles de Gaulle Airport as he was trying to flee the country. The French authorities did not reveal how many arrests had been made, or if any of more than $100 million in jewelry had been recovered. Big Tech earnings and central banks are in focus this week. The Fed is expected to lower borrowing costs again on Wednesday. (The European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan are expected to hold interest rates steady on Thursday.) On the earnings calendar, Alphabet, Microsoft and Meta report quarterly results on Wednesday; Amazon and Apple file their numbers on Thursday. Trump’s win in ArgentinaVoters yesterday gave President Javier Milei of Argentina a resounding thumbs-up. Investors are expected to follow that up today. Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza, exceeded expectations in midterm elections, giving him the political capital to pursue his free market overhauls. It was also a major victory for President Trump and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who has agreed to provide Buenos Aires with a $20 billion lifeline to prop up the peso just before the election. But big questions abound. Will the political triumph buy Milei the time to shore up the struggling economy? And will the optics of the extraordinary American assistance hound the White House, especially during a government shutdown that has left thousands of U.S. federal workers without pay? The latest: Milei’s party gained over 40 percent of the vote, giving him and allies the political power to try to cut costs and rewrite the country’s tax, pension and labor codes. “We will have without a doubt the most reformist Congress in Argentine history,” Milei said after the vote. Market watchers expect the country’s bonds and the peso to rally today. Argentine bonds and some of the biggest Argentine bank stocks listed in New York have already posted big gains this morning. The election was a foreign policy victory for Trump, too. The president’s bet on Milei paid off. He gave Milei a public ultimatum this month: “If he doesn’t win, we’re gone,” and the $20 billion currency swap deal would be in jeopardy, he warned. Trump wrote on social media after the election: “Our confidence in him was justified by the People of Argentina.” But Argentina is not out of the woods. The country has burned through most of its existing U.S. dollar reserves needed to prop up the peso and keep the lid on consumer prices. Economists expect that Argentina will eventually need to stop backstopping the peso, reigniting the inflation risk, as part of wider efforts to pay back the billions it owes creditors, including the I.M.F. and China. “This is the time for Argentina to have a realistic exchange rate, one that limits import expenditure and allows for reserves to be rebuilt,” said Brad Setser, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump’s backing could also boomerang on his administration. Washington “would like to counter China’s regional influence and gain preferential access to Argentina’s wealth of energy, lithium and copper,” wrote Maurice Obstfeld of the Peterson Institute for International Economics. But that “will be an expensive investment.” Politicians on the left and the right continue to assail Bessent’s lifeline. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, called the bailout “a punch in the gut” to American cattle ranchers who must compete with Argentine beef amid a wider price war. Bessent said the move was consistent with Trump’s America First policy. “We are supporting a U.S. ally,” he told NBC’s “Meet the Press” yesterday. “There will be no taxpayer losses.” “I see a lot of companies pre-emptively holding the line, forecasting and hoping that they can have smaller workforces.”— Brian Chesky, Airbnb’s C.E.O., on big companies trying to grow without hiring. A mix of economic uncertainty and the hope that investments in A.I. will bolster productivity has some businesses having second thoughts about whether to staff up. GLOBAL VIEW A.I. bragging rightsPresident Trump’s expected meeting this week with President Xi Jinping of China on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea is sure to grab headlines. But artificial intelligence — including the bragging rights over who has the upper hand — will also be high on the gathering’s agenda. Expect high-stakes discussions over tariffs, China’s export curbs on rare earth metals and U.S. export restrictions on A.I. chips. Investors will be tuning in, too. Top tech C.E.O.s, including Jensen Huang of Nvidia, are set to speak on their vision for A.I. growth even as regulatory hurdles and energy challenges loom. Here’s the view from abroad: The race for A.I. dominance will underscore the importance of the Trump-Xi talks, Suranjana Tewari, an Asia business correspondent for BBC, wrote yesterday. At stake, she added, is the “rivalry between the world’s two biggest economies as they compete for an edge in A.I. and advanced tech.” China is catching up. Beijing says huge tech investments are bearing results. One example: Xinhua, its official state-run news service, said this month that the country had completed construction of the world’s first undersea data center, powered by wind turbines. It called the $226 million, 24-megawatt project a “breakthrough.” Trump’s trade war could be an unintended catalyst for Chinese companies. Cambricon Technologies, an advanced chip manufacturer, saw revenues soar 44-fold in the first half of this year. “The firm has benefited from the U.S. tech sanctions as China’s A.I. start-ups seek local alternatives,” Nik Martin, a business reporter for the German public broadcaster Deutsche Welle, wrote last week. “The pressure to innovate under such constraints is driving China to find smarter, more efficient ways to scale A.I., potentially accelerating its ambition for long-term independence,” he wrote. “This is an outcome far from what Washington intended.” Does Xi hold the cards? Worth watching is how Xi’s “strikingly longer” vision for advancing the technology could give the country an edge, a laudatory Xinhua editorial last week noted. “This philosophy, marked by strategic foresight, a systemic outlook, and an insistence on thorough execution, is now being applied on the grandest scale imaginable,” the news outlet added.
Data centers, by the numbersOne way to answer the question of A.I. supremacy is to look at data center development. The billions flowing into the construction of these giant facilities has powered both Big Tech’s A.I. ambitions and an investment bonanza. By this measure, the U.S. is far ahead of its global peers. The number of data centers built on American soil outpaces that of several other major countries combined, according to Torsten Slok, the chief economist at Apollo Global Management. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
Deals
Politics, policy and regulation
Best of the rest
Thanks for reading! We’ll see you tomorrow. We’d like your feedback. Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. |
