Headlines

With inflation hurtling toward triple digits and, economists say, just a policy mistake or two away from setting the stage for hyperinflation, Argentina's central bank is desperately trying to avert a peso devaluation that would only trigger another wave of price hikes, Bloomberg News reported. Each day, the bank dispatches its traders to sell dollars and buy pesos that no one wants. On average, they’re burning through $60 million a day. For now, that’s kept the peso mostly steady in the primary foreign-exchange market.

China’s steel industry is entering a precarious new era as a worsening property crisis imperils demand and Beijing’s construction-led growth model looks increasingly untenable. Almost a third of China’s steel mills could go into bankruptcy in a squeeze that’s likely to last five years, Li Ganpo, founder and chairman of Hebei Jingye Steel Group, warned at a private company meeting in June. “The whole sector is losing money and I can’t see a turning point for now,” he said, according to a transcript of the gathering seen by Bloomberg News.

Chinese investors roughly doubled the number of applications they made last year seeking U.S. regulatory clearance for proposed stakes in American companies, according to a report the government plans to release on Tuesday, Reuters reported. The Treasury Department report seen by Reuters shows that Chinese investors filed 44 so-called "covered notices" seeking greenlights for their deals in U.S. President Joe Biden's first year in office compared to 17 such filings in 2020.

Asia crypto exchange Zipmex Pte plans to allow users to withdraw some tokens from their trading accounts, Bloomberg News reported. The exchange set a timeline for withdrawals of Solana’s SOL, Ripple’s XRP and Cardano’s ADA, from Zipmex’s Z Wallet. Larger coins including Bitcoin and Ether remain locked up, the company said in a statement.

Mexico’s programs and subsidies to tame inflation will cost the country almost 575 billion pesos ($28 billion) this year as the government tries to cap inflation that has spiked to the highest in over 21 years, Bloomberg News reported. Finance Minister Rogelio Ramirez de la O said Tuesday that the wide-ranging government programs used to contain price gains include gasoline and residential electricity subsidies for a total of 503 billion pesos on top of fertilizer handouts, measures to guarantee food supply and freezing highway tolls.

German retail sales fell at the largest annual rate since records began in 1994, highlighting the scale of the economic challenges facing the eurozone’s largest economy, the Financial Times reported. Retail sales volumes dropped 8.8 per cent in June compared with the same month last year, data from Destatis, the German office for national statistics, showed on Monday.

Maersk raised its 2022 profit guidance for a second time on Tuesday after beating quarterly revenue expectations as congested global supply chains that have boosted freight rates persist longer than expected, Reuters reported. The shipping industry has seen record profits in recent quarters due to a surge in consumer demand and pandemic-related logjams holding up containers in key ports in China, Europe and the United States. "Congestion in global supply chains leading to higher freight rates has continued longer than initially anticipated," Maersk said in a statement.

Australia’s central bank gave itself wriggle room to adjust the pace of interest-rate increases if the economic outlook deteriorates after delivering the sharpest policy tightening in a generation, Bloomberg News reported. “The board expects to take further steps in the process of normalizing monetary conditions over the months ahead, but it is not on a pre-set path,” Governor Philip Lowe said after hiking by 50 basis-points for a third straight month to 1.85%.

Economists downgraded their forecasts for Hong Kong’s economy, predicting it could contract for the third time in four years, after data Monday showed growth is being weighed down by Covid restrictions and a slump in trade, Bloomberg News reported. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. expects gross domestic product to decline 0.5% in 2022, down from an earlier prediction of 0.3% growth. Bloomberg Economics now sees GDP shrinking 0.6% compared with a previous projection of 0.7% expansion.

India’s trade deficit ballooned to a record high in July, as elevated commodity prices and a weak rupee inflated the country’s import bill, Bloomberg News reported. The gap between exports and imports widened to $31.02 billion in July, from $26.18 billion in June, B.V.R Subrahmanyam, India’s trade secretary, told reporters at a briefing in New Delhi Tuesday, citing preliminary data. The trade deficit in June was a record before the latest numbers were released. Imports jumped 43.59% in July from a year ago, while exports dropped 0.76%.