Tag: International Trade and World Market

Diesel Prices Could Keep Inflation High

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Inflation has been easing around the world. But what happens next could depend partly on the cost of diesel, a wild card that few analysts have been able to predict well. Higher gasoline prices — lit up on giant signs on streets and highways — are typically the most visible, visceral reminder of inflation to consumers. But analysts say diesel can have a bigger impact on inflation because the fuel powers trucks, industrial machinery and agricultural equipment. The prices of heating oil and jet fuel are also closely connected to…

Liu Yiqian, China’s Top Art Collector, Is Selling a Modigliani

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Few Chinese art collectors have made a bigger splash at global auctions in the past decade than Liu Yiqian, a former Shanghai taxi driver who amassed a fortune through big bets on Chinese real estate and pharmaceutical stocks. He was a profligate purchaser of Chinese antiquities and other artworks. In 2014, Mr. Liu paid a record $36.3 million for an ancient Chinese porcelain cup, and $45 million for a 600-year-old silk wall hanging. He paid $170.4 million for Amedeo Modigliani’s risqué “Nu Couché” painting a year later. One Shanghai museum…

Ukraine’s War of Drones Runs Into an Obstacle: China

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Surrounded by rooms filled with stacks of cluster munitions and half-made thermobaric bombs, a soldier from Ukraine’s 92nd Mechanized Brigade recently worked on the final part of a deadly supply chain that stretches from China’s factories to a basement five miles from the front lines of the war with Russia. This is where Ukrainian soldiers turn hobbyist drones into combat weapons. At a cluttered desk, the soldier attached a modified battery to a quadcopter so it could fly farther. Pilots would later zip tie a homemade shell to the bottom…

Behind China-U.S. Tensions Are Misunderstandings, Author Says.

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This article is from a special report on the Athens Democracy Forum in association with The New York Times. Keyu Jin was a 14-year-old schoolgirl in Beijing when she transferred as an exchange student to New York. She moved in with an American host family, and attended Horace Mann, a private high school in the Bronx. She was accepted to Harvard University, where she picked up economics degrees, including a Ph.D., and is now an associate professor at the London School of Economics. Steeped in the two cultures — she…

Slowing, Graying and in Debt, Can China’s Industrial Heartland Be Revived?

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Hundreds of workers at a factory in Shenyang in northeastern China weld automated machines, 95 yards long, that are used to bore subway tunnels. At another factory there, employees assemble robots that China’s solar panel makers will use to streamline their production. Shenyang is the capital of Liaoning Province, one of three large provinces in the northeast that constitute the cradle of China’s heavy industry. Now the central government, confronting a national economy that has slowed because of a real estate crisis that defies easy fixes, is turning to cities…

China’s Import Curbs on Cosmetics Face Pushback in Europe

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In the gloom of China’s economy, one area of business is booming: cosmetics. After enduring nearly three years of mandatory masks and frequent lockdowns during the pandemic, many Chinese consumers, wary of big-ticket purchases like apartments, are now splurging on lipstick, perfume, moisturizers and other personal care products. But cosmetics companies from France, Japan, South Korea and the United States, which have invested heavily in China, are missing out on a lot of the action. As China’s cosmetics companies are booming, imports of cosmetics are wilting under regulations that the…

European Union Will Investigate Chinese Subsidies of Electric Cars

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The European Union will begin an investigation into Chinese subsidies of electric vehicles, the bloc’s top official announced Wednesday, in a move that highlights Europe’s growing industrial and geopolitical competition with China. Chinese automakers have gained a dominant position in the world’s electric vehicles industry and see Europe as a big potential market. Automakers in Europe, who are racing to expand their battery-powered lineups, have expressed concern that they face tough competition against low-priced models from China. Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, announced the initiative…

Apple’s Stock Falls on Reports of a Chinese Government iPhone Ban

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Apple’s China conundrum Shares in Apple, the world’s most valuable public company, suffered their biggest single-day fall in a month on Wednesday following a report that China would extend a ban on iPhones for government workers. Any hint that the company’s business in China is under threat would understandably give investors a fright, and its shares are down another 3 percent in premarket trading Thursday morning. But the ripples will be felt more broadly: If one of the most successful operators in the world’s second-largest economy is at risk, can…

China’s Exports Fall for Fourth Straight Month

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The Background Economists had expected the August trade numbers to be slightly worse. A Reuters survey forecast that exports had fallen 9.2 percent in August from a year earlier, and that imports had dropped 9 percent. Exports had plunged 14.5 percent from a year earlier in July. Many multinationals, especially large retailers in the United States, have become worried about the dependence of their supply chains on China as geopolitical tensions have increased in recent years and as international trade disputes have intensified, particularly between the United States and China.…

China Is Flooding the World With Car Exports

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At a time when many of China’s exports are faltering and its consumers are spending less at home, the country is flooding the world with cars. Overseas demand for inexpensive vehicles made in China, mostly gasoline-powered models that Chinese consumers now shun in favor of electric cars, is so great that the biggest obstacle to selling more abroad is a lack of specialized ships to carry them. Chinese automakers have leaped to dominance in Russia since war began in Ukraine, transporting cars by train. The companies have also captured large…