Key events
Nvidia shares jump after Trump remarks
Shares in Nvidia jumped after Donld Trump said he will discuss the US chipmaker’s Blackwell artificial intelligence processors with Chinese leader Xi Jingping, calling the chip “super duper”. He said the company’s chief executive Jensen Huang recently brought a version of it to the Oval Office.
Trump already said a few months ago that he would consider allowing Nvidia to export a downgraded version of its Blackwell processor to China. This would be a major win for Nvidia and a significant concession to Beijing – and upend Washington’s campaign to curtail China’s prowess in AI.
Nvidia’s shares extended gains to 8.5% in Asian trading on the alternative platform Blue Ocean, Bloomberg News reported. They are currently up by 3.3% in pre-market trading ahead of the Wall Street open.
In August, Nvidia and fellow chipmaker AMD agreed to give the US government 15% of their revenue from advanced chips sold to China in return for export licences to the key market.
Trump lands in South Korea amid deadlocked trade talks over $350bn deal on tariffs
Donald Trump landed in South Korea on Wednesday to meet president Lee Jae Myung, with deadlocked talks over a $350bn trade deal between the two countries threatening to cast a shadow over the event.
After arriving on a flight from Tokyo, where he signed a rare earths deal with Japan’s new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, the US president addressed a summit of CEOs ahead of a meeting with Lee in the town of Gyeongju, a historical city playing host to the annual Apec summit.
South Korea says it will award Trump its most prestigious medal for his efforts to stabilise peace on the Korean Peninsula before the meeting.
Lee’s office said Trump will be the first US president to receive the Grand Order of Mugunghwa, South Korea’s highest order, in recognition of his past diplomatic efforts and to emphasise his role as a “peacemaker” between the rival Koreas.
Seoul also plans to present Trump with a replica of a royal gold crown from the ancient Silla Kingdom, whose capital was Gyeongju.
At the top of the agenda for the talks with Lee will be the unresolved trade agreement between the US and South Korea. The two allies announced a deal in August under which Seoul would avoid the worst of the tariffs by agreeing to pump $350bn of new investments into the US.
However, Korean officials say a direct cash injection could destabilise their economy, and they would rather do loans and loan guarantees instead. Officials from both sides have said Trump and Lee are unlikely to finalise an agreement.
For now, South Korea is stuck with a 25% tariff on vehicles, putting manufacturers such as Hyundai and Kia at a disadvantage against Japanese and European competitors, which face a 15% levy.
Trump has also pressed allies including South Korea to pay more for defence, and the two are likely to discuss efforts to engage North Korea, which announced early on Wednesday that it had test-fired a nuclear-capable cruise missile the previous day.
Introduction: Trump says he will cut fentanyl tariff on Chinese goods and expects ‘good deal’ with Xi
Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets and the world economy.
Donald Trump has said he will cut fentanyl-linked US tariffs imposed on China earlier this year, as he arrived in South Korea, a day before his meeting with Chinese president Xi Jinping in the country.
Speaking on Air Force One on Wednesday, the US president said he would reduce the 20% fentanyl levy he imposed in the spring as a way to put pressure on Beijing to curb the export of precursor chemicals used to make the synthetic opioid, which has fuelled the opioid crisis in the US. Trump told reporters:
I expect to be lowering that because I believe they can help us with the fentanyl situation.
We have to get rid of it.
US and Chinese officials have drawn up the framework for a trade deal for Trump and Xi to sign when they meet in the south-eastern city of Gyeongju tomorrow.
“I think we’re going to have a deal,” the US president said, adding that it will be a “great deal for both” nations, speaking at a meeting of corporate leaders at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit. He told the summit:
The world is watching, and I think we’ll have something that’s very exciting for everybody.
A US official told the Financial Times that Beijing is willing to take concrete action to stop the flow of fentanyl ingredients which, he said, merits “a little bit of relief” from Washington.
The Wall Street Journal reported yesterday that Trump was considering cutting the 20% tariff on Chinese goods to as low as 10%.
Trump also indicated that he is open to providing China with access to Nvidia’s Blackwell AI processor as part of a trade deal, which would be a major concession. Calling the chip “super duper,” he said:
We’ll be speaking about Blackwells.
It is the last stop of Trump’s Asia tour.
Most Asian stock markets rallied, with Japan’s Nikkei jumping by 2.2% South Korea’s up 1.76%, and the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges gaining 0.7% and nearly 2% respectively.
State-owned COFCO has bought three US soybean cargoes ahead of the meeting between the two presidents tomorrow – China’s first purchases from this year’s US harvest, Reuters reported, citing two trade sources.
As the two countries are locked in an uneasy trade truce, the lack of Chinese buying has cost American farmers (who largely voted for Donald Trump) billions of dollars in lost sales.
Later today, the US Federal Reserve is widely expected to cut interest rates by a quarter point to 4%, and traders are waiting for Fed chair Jerome Powell’s press conference to shed further light on the central bank’s next moves.
The Agenda
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8am GMT: Spain GDP flash for Q3, retail sales for September
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9.30am GMT: Bank of England consumer credit for September
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1.45pm GMT: Bank of Canada interest rate decision (quarter point cut to 2.25% forecast)
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2pm GMT: US Pending Home sales for September
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6pm GMT: US Federal Reserve interest rate decision (quarter point cut to 4% forecast)
