By Glen Hallick
Glacier Farm Media MarketsFarm – The following is a glance at the news moving markets in Canada and globally.
- Donald Trump continued the upheaval that has highlighted his first week as the 47th President of the United States. At the World Economic Forum in Davos on Thursday, Trump indicated the U.S. will pursue more singular action and he demanded NATO members increase their defence budgets to five per cent of their respective GDPs. In other comments, Trump said he would rather not impose tariffs on China noting he and Chinese President Xi Jinping have a “very good relationship.”
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By Glen Hallick Glacier Farm Media | MarketsFarm – The following is a glance at the news moving markets…
- Also during Trump’s address at Davos on Thursday, he chided Canada. “We don’t need them to make our cars, and they make a lot of them. We don’t need their lumber because we have our own forests. We don’t need their oil and gas, we have more than anybody,” the U.S. President boasted. In data from the Canadian government, 60 per cent of the crude oil and 99 per cent of the natural gas the U.S. imported in 2023 came from Canada. Trump threatened to slap a 25 per cent tariff on all U.S. imports from Canada effective Feb. 1.
- The Bank of Japan upped its key interest rates on Friday by 25 basis points with the central bank’s short-term policy rate going to 0.5 per cent. That marked the BoJ’s highest rates since the 2008 global financial crisis. While the BoJ seeks to bring inflation in Japan down to two per cent, the central bank said wholesale inflation remained at 3.8 per cent in December.
- As talk of possible peace negotiations in the Russia-Ukraine war ramped up this week, Ukraine launched a massive drone attack on Russia. The BBC reported on Friday that a large fireball rose above a refinery and pumping station southeast of Moscow. Meanwhile, Russian officials stated that all of 121 drones were shot down, including those targeting the oil facility.
