May 15th, 2025
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Asian stock markets had mixed results on Tuesday. The first excitement about the 90-day break in the trade disagreement between the U.S. and China went away. This happened because experts warned that President Donald Trump's plans could still change quickly.
The United States and China announced together that they will lower taxes on each other's products. The U.S. will cut taxes on Chinese goods from up to 145% down to 30%, while China will lower taxes on U.S. goods from 125% to 10%. This gives them more time to talk after the recent discussions in Switzerland, where the U.S. said they made good progress.
The result was better than most people expected, making investors feel more confident, said Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management.
"Of course, this was very controlled diplomacy. But it looks good and has real effects. It shows that even this government understands how much tariffs hurt the economy," he said in a comment.
However, there are still big problems in the discussions between China and the United States, and many Asian countries still need to make their own agreements to lower tariffs.
Beijing is still clearly angry about the trade war. On Tuesday, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, repeated that no one wins a trade war and that "Trying to control others only makes you alone."
The main stock market in Tokyo, the Nikkei 225, went up by 1.6% to 38,232.21. Car companies like Toyota and Suzuki saw their shares increase a lot.
Nissan Motor Co.'s shares went up by 3.4% after NHK, Japan's public TV station, reported that the company plans to cut over 10,000 jobs. This means a total of 20,000 jobs will be cut as part of the company's plan to improve its structure. Nissan was going to share its financial results for the last business year later on Tuesday.
The Kospi in South Korea stayed almost the same at 2,606.46.
The Hang Seng index in Hong Kong went up 3% the day before. This happened after officials from China and the U.S. agreed to stop and reduce tariffs. But today, the index went down 1.5% to 23,189.15 because many technology shares were sold.
The Shanghai Composite index went up slightly by 0.2% to 3,376.22, and Taiwan’s Taiex increased by 1%.
Australia's main stock index, the S&P/ASX 200, went up by 0.5% to 8,274.70.
On Monday, the two biggest economies in the world decided to remove most taxes on goods they trade with each other.
This made the S&P 500 go up by 3.3%, so it's now only 5% lower than its highest point ever in February. It dropped almost 20% after that, but it went up again last month. This happened because people hoped President Donald Trump would lower taxes on goods from other countries after making trade deals.
The main stock market index in many retirement accounts is now higher than it was on April 2nd. On that day, Trump announced high taxes on imported goods, which he called "Liberation Day." This made people worry about a possible recession that he might have caused.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average went up by 2.8% and the Nasdaq composite went up a lot by 4.3%.
After going up on Monday, oil prices went down a little. US oil dropped by 22 cents to $61.73 per barrel, and international oil fell by 25 cents to $64.72 per barrel.
On Monday, the U.S. dollar became stronger compared to other currencies like the euro, the Japanese yen, and the Swiss franc. By early Tuesday, the dollar was worth less against the Japanese yen, trading at 147.98 yen, which was lower than 148.47 yen. However, it became stronger against the euro, increasing from $1.1088 to $1.1113.
The U.S. and China stopped talking for a while after the U.S. made a deal with the U.K. last week. This deal will lower taxes on many things the U.K. sells to the U.S. to 10%, but it will still take several weeks to happen.
Economic reports coming out later this week, like those on inflation and how people in the US feel about the economy, might show how much the economy has been hurt by the uncertainty about tariffs.
Many shops saw their value increase because they sell many things made in China and other Asian countries. Best Buy went up by 6.6%, and Amazon grew by 8.1%.
Smaller American companies, which rely more on the US economy than bigger companies, grew a lot, and the Russell 2000 index went up by 3.4%.
Clothing companies that get a lot of their materials from China also did well.
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