In today’s briefing:
- The Other Risk to World Trade: China’s Mercantilism
- CX Daily: Chinese Local Governments Foresee Heightened Fiscal Pressure
- Price Rise Keeps Indian Rubber Production Buoyant In 2024
- HEW: Tariffs Trumped Data
- [ETP 2025/09] WTI Drops on Trade Tensions, Henry Hub Falls to Forecasts of Milder Temperatures
The Other Risk to World Trade: China’s Mercantilism
- While America’s restrictions threaten the global trading order, China’s outdated, export-reliant model is culpable, too. In exporting its overcapacity, China behaves like a small, open economy, but it is not.
- Given its size, China’s export surges produce outsized effects, triggering protectionist responses. China’s friends in the Global South are scrambling to defend their domestic industries, and not just the West.
- Until China finds a way to recycle its surpluses into investments in other countries, trading partners will suffer the downsides of import competition without any offsets, thus worsening trade tensions.
CX Daily: Chinese Local Governments Foresee Heightened Fiscal Pressure
- Fiscal / In Depth: Chinese local governments foresee heightened fiscal pressure
- Stocks /: As Hong Kong stocks surge, foreign investors stay on sidelines
- Hong Kong /: Hong Kong considers regulating basketball betting to boost revenue
Price Rise Keeps Indian Rubber Production Buoyant In 2024
- Production up 3.18% YoY and imports up 19.42% in 2024
- Production-Consumption gap 526,000 tons
- Commerce Minister dodges floor price plea by smallholders
HEW: Tariffs Trumped Data
- Resilience in Euro area price and wage inflation, ESI surveys, and hawkish comments in the latest meeting accounts were trumped by US events. Renewed tariff threats and soft US surveys led a dovish repricing for the Fed that also dominated for the ECB.
- Next week has more top tier releases, starting with flash EA inflation for February where we are still a tenth above consensus at 2.4%. That won’t stop the ECB cutting, but should encourage restraint for April. US payrolls and tariffs are the other highlights.
- Note: Smartkarma is now the sole distributor of our research, so clients will only receive all other research from Smartkarma (queries to [email protected]).
[ETP 2025/09] WTI Drops on Trade Tensions, Henry Hub Falls to Forecasts of Milder Temperatures
- For the week ending 21/Feb, U.S. crude inventories dropped by 2.3m barrels, contradicting expectations of a 2.5m barrel build. Gasoline stockpiles unexpectedly rose, while distillate stocks surged more than expected.
- U.S. natural gas inventories fell by 261 Bcf for the week ending 21/Feb, lower than analyst expectations of a 276 Bcf drawdown. Inventories are 11.5% below the 5-year seasonal average.
- BP pivots back to fossil fuels, cutting renewables and reducing its quarterly buyback to USD 0.75 billion from USD 1.75 billion. President Trump revoked Chevron’s license to operate in Venezuela.
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