Rising oil and natural gas prices from the war in Iran are beginning to weigh on the Chinese economy, further slowing already anemic consumer spending and hurting critical export sectors, the New York Times reported. Car sales fell in March and plunged further in April. Restaurants and hotels are seeing fewer customers as households turn cautious. In southern China, thousands of toy factory workers protested last week after their employer collapsed under rising plastic costs and ongoing tariffs in the United States.
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The Iran war will push more than 15,000 additional companies into insolvency worldwide over the next two years, with Asia absorbing more than half the hit, Allianz Trade has warned in a sharp upgrade to its Middle East risk outlook, InsuranceBusinessMag.com reported. The trade credit insurer now sees global business failures rising 6% in 2026, a fifth straight annual increase, before plateauing at elevated levels in 2027. On its own reckoning, the conflict adds 7,000 cases next year and a further 7,900 in 2027 above what the insurer had assumed pre-crisis.
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Central banks may need to inflict much more economic pain to control inflation fueled by a long Middle East war than they did to control the spike in prices after the pandemic, the International Monetary Fund's chief economist said, Reuters reported. When Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022 drove oil prices above $100 a barrel, an already overheated post-COVID economy meant small increases in interest rates went a long way to cool demand, IMF Chief Economist Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas said in an interview on Tuesday.
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Iran’s demand that oil tankers pay transit tolls in cryptocurrency for passing through the Strait of Hormuz has cast a new light on the country’s $7.8 billion crypto economy and the role digital currencies play for regimes operating outside the mainstream financial system, the Wall Street Journal reported.
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The Iran war is darkening the outlook for the world economy — whether or not a fragile ceasefire holds, the head of the International Monetary Fund warned on Thursday, the Associated Press reported. Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said that the fund will downgrade its forecast for the world economy next week. “Had it not been for this shock, we would have been upgrading global growth,” Georgieva said in remarks before next week's IMF-World Bank spring meetings.
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Iran told mediators it would limit the number of ships crossing the Strait of Hormuz to around a dozen a day and charge tolls under the cease-fire struck by President Trump, showing Tehran plans to tighten its grip on the world’s most important energy-shipping lane, the Wall Street Journal reported. Ships that pass will have to coordinate with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the powerful paramilitary group that has been labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the European Union, Arab mediators said.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that imports from countries supplying Iran with military weapons will face immediate 50 per cent tariffs with no exemptions, announcing the threatened duty in a social media post just hours after agreeing to a two-week ceasefire with Tehran, Reuters reported.
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As the war on Iran enters its second month, reports from state media and residents in the Islamic Republic indicate mounting attacks on civilian infrastructure including homes, factories and electricity facilities, Bloomberg reported. Iran’s Red Crescent Society, part of the international humanitarian network, said on March 30 that U.S.-Israeli airstrikes had damaged or destroyed more 300 hospitals or medical facilities and more than 90,000 homes, about half of them in Tehran. Some residents say they’ve seen increasing numbers of strikes on residential buildings.
The escalating conflict in the Middle East has knocked the global economy off a stronger growth path, the OECD warned on Thursday, as a near-halt in energy shipments through the Strait of Hormuz threatens to push inflation sharply higher, Reuters reported. The Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development said the global economy had been on course for stronger-than-expected growth before the war in Iran erupted, but that prospect has now all but disappeared.
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The clues started emerging in November 2024, a trail of evidence that pointed to possible financial crimes involving a vendor for Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. Some clues were in plain sight, found in public business records in Singapore and Hong Kong, on a U.S. trade blacklist, and in Binance transaction logs that showed hundreds of millions of dollars flowing through the account of a 78-year-old Chinese man.
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