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Good morning and welcome back to FirstFT Asia. In today’s newsletter:
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Trump and Xi agree to one-year trade deal
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Why there’s new downward pressure on the yen
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New Iranian capital city proposed
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A spooky tour through Tokyo
We begin again in South Korea, where US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed to a broad one-year trade truce on Thursday. Here’s everything we know about the two’s first meeting since 2019.
The agreement: Trump and Xi will postpone recent sweeping export controls on rare earths and semiconductors as part of the deal. The US president said he had agreed to cut the fentanyl-related tariff on China in half and in a social media post after the 90-minute meeting in Busan, Trump said Xi had authorised China to begin buying “massive amounts” of soyabeans, sorghum, and other farm products.
How Trump and Xi are reacting: “It was an amazing meeting,” the US president told reporters aboard Air Force One as he flew back to Washington on Thursday. “On a scale of 0-10, with 10 being the best, the meeting was a 12.” Trump said he will visit China in April and that Xi would make a reciprocal visit to the US.
The Communist party’s People’s Daily quoted Xi as saying: “Both teams should refine and finalise the follow-up work as soon as possible, uphold and implement the consensus, and deliver tangible results”. The Chinese leader said it was natural that the US and China would “not always see eye to eye” and it was “normal for the two leading economies of the world to have frictions now and then”.
What experts are saying: Dennis Wilder, a former head of China analysis at the CIA, told the FT that it set the stage for Scott Bessent and He Lifeng to convert the trade framework into a comprehensive deal and that both sides could reimpose punitive measures if little concrete progress was made. But other China experts believe Beijing gained the upper hand in Thursday’s negotiations. “Xi stared down Trump and Trump blinked,” said Scott Kennedy, a China expert at think-tank CSIS.
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The FT View: Trump-Xi’s summit averted escalation for now, but underlying friction remains. The FT’s editorial board asks how long will this last?
Here’s what else we’re keeping tabs on today:
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Results: Chevron and ExxonMobil are the latest companies to report results tomorrow.
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Economic data: The EU, Australia and France are expected to release inflation data on Friday.
How well did you keep up with the news this week? Take our quiz.
Five more top stories
1. The Bank of Japan has held interest rates, sending the yen sharply lower against the US dollar. At a press conference, BoJ governor Kazuo Ueda said he had “no preconceived views on the necessity or timing” of an increase in interest rates. Although the decision was widely expected, analysts have warned that Ueda’s cautious tone could renew more downward pressure on the yen.
2. Google, Meta and Microsoft spent $80bn over the past quarter on AI infrastructure. Investors had markedly different reactions to their investment plans though as they questioned whether the Big Tech companies can translate their spending spree into income.
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More on Meta: The social media group is planning to raise $25bn from a bond sale to help it pay for soaring artificial intelligence costs.
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Legal action warning: One of the top US officials overseeing OpenAI’s restructuring has warned she will take legal action if the company fails to stick to pledges Sam Altman agreed to in negotiations.
3. BYD’s profits declined 33 per cent in the third quarter as the EV carmaker doubles down on its overseas market. The world’s largest and fastest-growing producer of EVs and the chief global rival to Elon Musk’s Tesla plans to unveil a string of technological breakthroughs to combat the slowdown in growth.
4. Liberal Dutch leader Rob Jetten is poised to become the next prime minister in the Netherlands. His D66 party performed better than expected in parliamentary elections, suggesting it was tied for first place with the far-right Freedom party. The 38-year-old former energy minister has emulated former US president Barack Obama in a “yes we can”-style campaign focused on political stability, economic renewal and European co-operation.
5. Widespread protests are erupting across Tanzania against a “sham” election marred by the killing and disappearances of opposition figures. The Chama Cha Mapinduzi party and its forerunner have been in power for more than six decades in the country. As a result of the unrest, authorities have cut off much of the internet and issued curfews.
The Big Read
© FT montage/Getty Images
The race to create weight-loss drugs has only grown more acute as the prevalence of adult obesity has risen. While breakthroughs have been made with hunger-regulating injections, developing an orally ingested anti-obesity treatment remains the holy grail for scientists. Hannah Kuchler, global pharmaceuticals editor, investigates how far are we from discovering a weight-loss pill.
We’re also reading . . .
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A tale of two embassies: A dispute over China’s planned “mega embassy” in London has sparked a wider cooling of relations between Britain and China that some fear threatens to become a diplomatic winter.
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First Brands: Onset Financial called itself a “dominant force” in financing everything from chickens to helicopters. It was also First Brands’ biggest creditor.
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Sports betting: Prediction markets are rapidly evolving into sports gambling behemoths. How did the wild west explosion of sports betting come about?
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A $100 to-do list: Digital calendars are useful. But there is nothing odd about relying on pen and paper, writes Tim Harford.
Map of the day
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Iran’s president Masoud Pezeshkian has called for a new capital to replace Tehran, arguing water shortages have made the megacity unlivable. Experts, however, have dismissed the idea by saying the Islamic republic has no capacity for such a massive project. Here’s how Tehran’s population is reacting to the proposal.
Take a break from the news . . .
If you’re feeling spooky this Halloween, FT Globetrotter has gone hunting for ghosts across Tokyo. From a cursed road tunnel and eerie vending machines to a haunted shopping mall with a dark past, Leo Lewis finds that the uncanny lurks where you least expect it in the Japanese capital.
‘Notoriously unsettling to walk through’: the Sendagaya Tunnel
