November 6, 2025
The global economic picture today shows a tentative recovery in Asian markets, bolstered by the one-year trade truce announced by U.S. and Chinese leaders at APEC. But important structural risks remain, chiefly a high-profile U.S. legal challenge to the President’s tariff authority and intensifying tech-security competition between Washington and Beijing.
Asian shares advanced today, recouping earlier losses after stronger U.S. jobs data and a Wall Street rally lifted risk appetite. Investor optimism is tied to the accord reached by Presidents Trump and Xi in South Korea, which U.S. officials say will cut some tariffs (with certain fentanyl-related duties halved) and pause a number of punitive measures effective Nov. 10, 2025. Beijing has announced it will suspend several retaliatory levies for a year and agreed to resume some purchases of U.S. agricultural goods, though a number of details, and Beijing’s full confirmation of volume commitments, remain subject to verification.
Washington may be the larger source of lingering uncertainty. During oral arguments this week, Supreme Court justices pressed skeptical questions about the administration’s reliance on emergency economic authority to impose sweeping tariffs, asking whether statutes invoked by the White House actually authorize tariff measures of the scope used. Observers warn a decision restricting executive emergency tariff powers could materially constrain unilateral tariff policy going forward.
The tariff pause has not ended technology and security frictions. Shares of semiconductor-linked companies ticked higher as demand for AI components stays robust. At the same time, Reuters and other outlets report Beijing has issued guidance restricting the use of foreign AI accelerators in state-funded data centres, a move that would accelerate reliance on domestic chipmakers and complicate market access for some U.S. vendors. Meanwhile, North Korea publicly denounced recent U.S. sanctions targeting alleged cybercrime-linked finance networks and threatened unspecified countermeasures, highlighting a broader regional security backdrop that could affect investor risk perceptions.
The working consensus is that the APEC truce has averted an immediate escalation in U.S.–China trade hostilities for the coming year, but it leaves intact core structural tensions, legal limits on U.S. tariff power and the race for technological self-reliance, that will shape risk for Asia-Pacific businesses beyond the truce’s one-year window.
https://asianews.network/china-us-seek-to-stabilise-trade-relations/
