Headlines

Hiring in Canada ground to a halt last month even as the population continued to boom, pushing the country’s unemployment rate to its highest in years in a further sign the labor market continues to loosen, the Wall Street Journal reported. Employment nationally slipped by 2,200 in March from the month before, the first decline since a similar dip last July, while the unemployment rate was 0.3 percentage point higher at 6.1%, Statistics Canada reported Friday.

Argentina's monthly inflation rate likely edged down to 12% in March, analysts polled by Reuters estimated, which would mark a third straight month of deceleration for prices and a boost for new libertarian President Javier Milei's economic reform drive, Reuters reported. The South American country has the world's highest inflation with the annualized rate running over 275%, which hurts consumer spending power and dampens the economy. Milei has made curbing prices a focus via an austerity package of cuts.

Global goods trade should rebound this year, but more slowly than previously expected, after only its third decline in 30 years in 2023, the World Trade Organization said on Wednesday, Reuters reported. The Geneva-based trade body said easing inflationary pressures should help the volume of merchandise trade increase by 2.6% in 2024 and by 3.3% in 2025, after a 1.2% decline last year. The WTO had previously forecast a 3.3% rise in 2024.

Uruguay’s central bank resumed its easing cycle with a half-point cut to its benchmark interest rate after inflation rose at the slowest pace since 2005, Bloomberg News reported. The central bank said it lowered the key rate by 50 basis points to 8.50% following a pause in February thanks to a gradual drop in inflation expectations and a sustained slowdown in consumer price increases that’ve stayed within the 3% to 6% target. The move on Wednesday marked the central bank’s biggest since a half-point reduction last October.

German manufacturing orders edged up in February, reflecting only a moderate rebound as demand for goods remains sluggish, the Wall Street Journal reported. Orders were 0.2% higher than the prior month, German statistics office Destatis said Friday. Orders collapsed by a revised 11.4% on month in January, a large decline that evened out a steep rise in December that was primarily driven by aircraft orders from manufacturer Airbus. In a less volatile three-month-by-three-month period, orders climbed 2.8%.

Austrian tycoon Rene Benko and one of his companies faces a probe by Liechtenstein prosecutors into suspected insolvency fraud and money laundering, Bloomberg News reported. “It can be confirmed that preliminary investigations have been initiated against a natural person and a legal entity as well as against unknown perpetrators,” prosecutor Gregor Hirn said in an emailed response to Bloomberg questions. The prosecutor confirmed the investigation, and pointed to earlier reports by the Swiss finance blog Inside Paradeplatz that named Benko and the allegations.

A Vietnam court sentenced real estate tycoon Truong My Lan to death for her role in a $12 billion fraud case, underscoring the Communist Party’s determination to crack down on corruption, Bloomberg News reported. Lan, the chairwoman of Van Thinh Phat Group, was arrested in 2022 and eventually faced charges including bribery of government officials and violation of bank lending rules. The main case against her was that she embezzled funds from Saigon Commercial Bank between February 2018 and October 2022.

Germany's only remaining major department store chain is set to get new owners after its third spell in bankruptcy protection in four years, and the company aims to keep most of its stores open, its insolvency administrator said Wednesday, the Associated Press reported. Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof is to be taken over by a consortium of U.S. private equity firm NRDC Equity Partners, which currently has investments in Hudson's Bay of Canada and Saks Fifth Avenue among others, and German businessman Bernd Beetz's BB Kapital SA.

For years, the International Monetary Fund has collected billions of dollars in fees from its biggest borrowers, a practice that penalized those most in need. Now, with its coffers refilling and interest rates running high, the world’s lender of last resort is considering giving them a break, Bloomberg News reported. The IMF released a statement last week saying that “a number” of its board members were open to reviewing policies around surcharges, the fees that it charges nations that borrow more than their allotted share or take longer to repay.

The International Monetary Fund on Wednesday said recent industrial policy initiatives pursued by the United States, Europe and other countries to steer innovation in certain sectors were no panacea to boost economic growth, Reuters reported. The IMF, in a chapter of its forthcoming Fiscal Monitor, said industrial policy could drive innovation if done well, but history was full of cautionary tales of policy mistakes, high fiscal costs and negative spillovers in other countries.