BitGou: Monday Morning Briefing: Stocks surge after China-U.S. trade truce

u.s-china trade dispute

President Donald Trump said China had agreed to cut import tariffs on American-made cars, buoying shares in BMW and Daimler AG who manufacture in the United States for export to the world’s biggest auto market. The truce between U.S. and Chinese leaders on trade tariffs provided boosted global markets, fuelling a nearly one percent surge on world stocks and pushing emerging currencies higher against the dollar.

China and the United States agreed on Saturday to a truce in their trade war following talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Argentina. However, there are differences in both countries’ official accounts of what was agreed. Here are some of the key distinctions.

Many delegates from the world’s 20 largest economies arrived at a summit in Argentina over the weekend determined to clinch an agreement to reform the global trade system, pushed to a breaking point by tensions between the United States and China. To do so, they had to bow to U.S. and Chinese demands to drop some of the pledges that have become hallmarks of the Group of 20 industrialized nations.

Energy

Not-so-clean coal: One of the chemicals used to refine coal, calcium bromide, has polluted a river and lakes near a North Carolina power plant, potentially threatening the health of more than a million people.

Qatar said it was quitting OPEC from January to focus on its gas ambitions, taking a swipe at the group’s de facto leader Saudi Arabia and marring efforts to show unity before this week’s meeting of exporters to tackle an oil price slide.

Royal Dutch Shell caved in to growing investor pressure over climate change with plans to set short-term targets for reducing its carbon footprint. Shareholders had criticized Shell for last year setting long-term “ambitions” to halve its emissions of carbon dioxide by 2050, which lacked binding targets for implementation.

World

France’s prime minister met with opposition leaders as President Emmanuel Macron sought a way to defuse nationwide protests over high living costs that led to widespread rioting in Paris at the weekend and are hurting the economy.

The Saudi-led coalition said it approved evacuating wounded Houthi fighters from Yemen for treatment, meeting a main condition for the group to attend U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Sweden this week aimed at ending the nearly four-year-old war.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said she would still be in her job in two weeks time, downplaying speculation that she might resign if she loses a key Brexit vote in parliament which is scheduled for Dec. 11.

Commentary: The U.S. Senate decision to vote on a resolution to end military support for the Saudi-led war in Yemen was a rebuke for President Donald Trump over his support for Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman after the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi, writes Mohamad Bazzi, a journalism professor at New York University.

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