Gold prices are advancing amid a slump in global equities and on the back of expectations that the US Federal Reserve (the Fed) will cut interest rates at least twice this year, beginning in July. The price of the precious metal rose to a more than 13-month high on Friday, June 7, after unexpectedly weak US jobs data raised hopes that it would provide the necessary trigger for the Fed to ease rates.
The ongoing US-China trade conflict took an ugly turn in May after the United States imposed sanctions on the world’s biggest supplier of telecom equipment and smartphones, China’s Huawei Technologies, cutting the company off from all of its trading partners in the US and barring US companies from supplying components without government approval.
The unemployment rate in the United States climbed to 4.0 percent in January, the highest since June 2018 and marginally higher than the 3.9 percent recorded in December of last year.
There have been 22 federal government shutdowns in the United States since 1979, with three last year alone, including the most recent 35-day partial shutdown, which came into effect on December 22, 2018. Considered the longest in US history
China’s factory orders fell for the second month in a row, with the Caixin/Markit Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) indicating further contraction in the country’s manufacturing activity in January.
Brazil’s current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $0.82 billion in December 2018 from $2.07 billion a year earlier on the back of a widening trade surplus in goods, even as the country’s services industry recorded an annual deficit.
The US Federal Reserve (the Fed) voted unanimously to raise benchmark interest rates by 25 points at its concluding monetary-policy meeting in 2018 on December 18-19.
The manufacturing sector in the United States slowed for the second straight month, according to the Institute for Supply Management’s (ISM’s) PMI (Purchasing Managers Index) survey in October.
Over the last few months, market experts have been sounding the death knell for the United States’ dominance in world trade and the effectiveness of the dollar as the reserve currency, which has historically enjoyed strong investor confidence.
When Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi failed to exit from his country’s embassy in Istanbul on October 2, 2018—after he entered it to complete required paperwork—the most powerful country in the Middle East was poorly prepared for the global repercussions that would eventually follow.