Blogs

US press reports on an announcement due Tuesday from the White House: – to sign a $354 million four-year contract with a new company – to manufacture generic medicines and pharmaceutical ingredients that are needed to treat Covid-19 but are now made overseas, mostly in India and China. Says the NY Times

Forex news for Asia trading Tuesday 19 May 2020 –   The news that China had confirmed an 80% tariff on imports of Australian barley saw the AUD … trade higher. After a bit of fumbling around 0.6520 AUD/USD reached a high just over 0.6550. This was accompanied by a better bid NZD and GBP […]

Editor-in-chief of the Global Times in response to US President Trump claiming he is taking the anti-malaria drug against the coronavirus  Watching the GT is reasonable way to track US-China tensions. Not looking good right now. 

Fitch see a huge contraction for the global economy – They had forecast -1.7% back in April – Now revised to -3.2%  – most of the contraction will be in Q2

Australian Bureau of Statistics new data on the labour market Between the week ending 25 April 2020 and the week ending 2 May 2020: Its reasonable to characterise the data as less bad rather than improving much or anything like that. 

Back on May 10 we flagged the upcoming tariffs China would impose on Australian barley exports to the country. Those tariffs have been confirmed by the Commerce Ministry in China. Australia's trade minister Birmingham says 'deeply concerned' on these.

Reuters report the exchange is will require companies from some countries to raise $25 million in their IPO or, alternatively, at least a quarter of their post-listing market capitalization

Germany and France have put their hands up in agreement to the support the €500bn Recovery Fund The path ahead for getting approval is a rocky one though:

EUR/USD  USD/JPY  GBP/USD See here for global coronavirus case data

EUR/USD  USD/JPY  GBP/USD  AUD/USD  NZD/USD See here for global coronavirus case data