Global Economy

FT premium subscribers can click here to receive Trade Secrets by email. Hello from Seoul where, like in many big Asian cities, anxiety is rising over the spread of the deadly coronavirus from China. Across the region officials are tightening borders and expanding quarantines as both the death toll in …

Investors are seeking more clarity from the US Federal Reserve this week on how much it may expand its balance sheet following the central bank’s efforts to restore order to short-term funding markets. The Fed has been buying US Treasury bills at a rate of $60bn a month since a …

Bruno Margollé and his ancestors have fished for sole and cod in the English Channel since the 18th century, and like other EU fishermen who work in Britain’s waters today, he regards Brexit with trepidation. Based in Boulogne-sur-Mer near the narrowest point of the Channel with his 24m fishing boat, Mr Margollé says …

FT subscribers can click here to receive FirstFT every day by email. Global equity markets and oil prices fell sharply on Monday as the fast-spreading coronavirus hit sectors from travel to manufacturing amid warnings that the disease would hit China’s economic growth.  The S&P 500 index ended the day 1.6 per lower in …

The US will push hard to include politically sensitive subjects such as chemical-washed chicken in a mooted transatlantic trade deal with the EU, President Donald Trump’s secretary of agriculture has insisted. Sonny Perdue said Brussels should accept food production methods banned in Europe to secure the deal recently promised by …

Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, on Monday set up a “fish for finance” Brexit clash between Britain and Brussels by suggesting that the City of London could lose access to European markets unless the UK opens up its coastal waters to EU boats. Britain has long suspected that Brussels would …

New mortgage approvals by Britain’s high-street banks jumped to their highest number since 2015 in December, thanks to record-low interest rates. Banks approved 46,800 mortgages during the month, up 6.3 per cent from November, and 19.6 per cent higher than in December 2018, according to UK Finance, an industry body that tracks …

FT premium subscribers can click here to receive Trade Secrets by email Hello all, Brussels calling. This is the week that the UK finally leaves the EU and we can put all that debate about trade and Brexit behind us. HA HA FOOLED YOU. It’s never going to end. Just …

German business confidence unexpectedly dropped in January, cooling hopes that the downturn in the export-led manufacturing sector was on track to stabilise. The Ifo Institute, a Munich-based think-tank, said its measure showing sentiment among the 9,000 German companies it surveys every month had declined to 95.9 in January, from 96.3 …

China’s leaders are bracing for a blow to first-quarter economic growth as the deadly coronavirus weighs on consumption and travel during the lunar new year and threatens to hit manufacturing. The virus, which originated in the central Chinese city of Wuhan, has caused the cancellations of holiday events across the …