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Wall Street Set To Jump On Temporary Trade Detente

(Reuters) – U.S. stock index futures jumped around 2 percent on Monday, setting Wall Street up to add to last week’s strong gains, after the United States and China declared a temporary trade truce.

Strong gains in Apple Inc (AAPL.O) and other technology stocks pushed Nasdaq futures NQc1 up more than 2 percent, while S&P 500 e-minis ESc1 touched a near 1-month high. Gains in Dow futures set the blue-chip index up for a near 450-point gain at the open.

Washington and Beijing agreed to a 90-day trade ceasefire during the G20 summit in Argentina on Saturday and U.S. President Donald Trump said China has agreed to “reduce and remove” tariffs below the 40 percent level that the country is currently charging on U.S.-made vehicles.

However, the White House also said that the existing 10 percent tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods would be lifted to 25 percent if no deal was reached within 90 days.

The trade optimism spilt over to shares of Apple, which gained 3.3 percent in premarket trading.

Trump had said last week that the next round of tariffs could also be placed on the company’s iPhones, as part of the $267 billion list of goods not yet hit by tariffs.

Trade-sensitive Caterpillar Inc (CAT.N), Boeing Co (BA.N) gained over 4.5 percent each, while U.S. carmakers General Motors Co (GM.N), Ford Motor Co (F.N) and Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) rose between 3 percent and 4 percent.

Shares of energy companies also rose as crude prices surged, helping lift Exxon Mobil Corp (XOM.N) up by 2.1 percent and Chevron Corp (CVX.N) by 2.4 percent. [O/R]

“Most of us were hoping that we would come out of these discussions with no new tariffs and a pause, which is ultimately what we got,” said Randy Frederick, vice president of trading and derivatives for Charles Schwab in Austin, Texas.

Image from RT.com

Boeing, Airbus Fret Over China Trade War

ZHUHAI, China (Reuters) – The world’s two largest planemakers signaled on Tuesday that they were keen to see an end to a bruising trade war between Washington and Beijing, as China opened its largest airshow with a display that showcased its aviation ambitions.

Boeing (BA.N) and Airbus (AIR.PA) made their comments on the opening day of the biennial Airshow China, being held in the coastal city of Zhuhai from Nov. 6-11, that is traditionally an event for Beijing to parade its growing aviation prowess.

China has become a key hunting ground for deals for foreign aviation firms thanks to surging travel demand, but the outlook has been complicated by Beijing’s desire to grow its own champions in industries ranging from aviation to semiconductors to robots.

Its ties with the United States have in particular been strained. President Donald Trump criticizes China for what he sees as intellectual property theft, entry barriers to U.S. business and a gaping trade deficit, while Beijing calls the complaints unreasonable. The two sides have resorted to tit-for-tat tariffs on goods worth billions of dollars.

While U.S.-made aircraft, among America’s biggest exports to China, have so far escaped Beijing’s tariffs, analysts said they were still waiting to see what the trade war would spell for U.S. companies such as Boeing.

George Xu, the top China executive at Boeing’s biggest rival Airbus (AIR.PA), said at a news conference that the European planemaker did not expect a sales windfall from the tensions.

“I am Chinese and we don’t like this kind of trade war,” he said. “Nobody will be the winner in this kind of trade war.”

Airbus had hoped to close a deal for 184 aircraft during a trip to China by French President Emmanuel Macron in January, but negotiations appear to have stalled, industry sources say.

In carefully worded comments, Boeing’s senior vice-president of Northeast Asia sales, Rick Anderson, said China was a rapidly growing aviation market and that he believed Washington and Beijing understood that.

“We continue to engage with leaders of United States and China, and continue to urge productive conversation to resolve the trade discrepancies,” he said.

“We are optimistic for a quick solution.”

AMBITIONS ON DISPLAY

China and United States have in recent days stoked optimism that a breakthrough might be made, after Trump spoke by phone with President Xi Jinping last week.

The two countries have also announced that they will hold a delayed top-level security dialogue on Friday.

Still, Beijing has shown little sign of taming its ambitions to catch up with rivals like the United States, France and Germany in high-end technology.

Projects being showcased in Zhuhai included a full-scale mock-up of a widebody CR929 jet being jointly developed by Commercial Aircraft Corporation of China and Russia’s United Aircraft Corporation (UAC) in hopes of eventually competing with Boeing’s 787 and Airbus’ A350 jets.

The global market for widebody jets is estimated to be worth $2.5 trillion over the next two decades, according to Boeing, with the fleet size more than doubling to 9,180 jets.

Widebodies account for around 20 percent of projected global jet deliveries over that period but almost 40 percent by value.

Hundreds of spectators and industry executives at the airshow were also treated to a roaring flight demonstration that involved three of China’s Chengdu J-20 stealth fighters, which debuted at the show two years ago with a 60-second flypast.

China put the J-20 into service last year that experts say is a part of Beijing’s plan to narrow a military technology gap with the United States and its F-35 stealth fighter.

Sophisticated anti-aircraft batteries were also on display.

“If you tie those together with the J-20, the message is about Anti-Area Access Denial. It is not just about protecting the motherland but pushing the Americans away,” said aerospace analyst Sash Tusa of UK-based Agency Partners.

(Reporting by Brenda Goh, Stella Qiu and Tim Hepher; Writing by Brenda Goh; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

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