Economy

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldHalf of all Mexican exports to the US last year did not arrive under North America’s free trade deal and therefore still face an immediate risk of 25 per cent tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump, according to US government data and trade experts.Most of those goods could meet USMCA trade deal terms by filing extra paperwork, but about 10 per cent of Mexico’s exports to the US — worth about $50bn — will struggle to comply, leaving companies with a dilemma: scramble to switch their supply chains, or wait and see if the tariffs stick. Trump agreed this month after two days of market turmoil to exempt goods sold under the USMCA from the tariffs he says are needed to restore fairness to the US’s trading relationship with Mexico and Canada.But a chunk of those likely do not meet rules for minimum levels of North American content, according to Mexico’s economy ministry, casting a pall over the economy of America’s largest trading partner. Under Trump’s current plans, those products will face bigger fees than goods from China, his trade nemesis, which are only subject to a 20 per cent tariff.“Losing the market in the US is not an option for Mexican manufacturers,” said Andrés Díaz Bedolla, chief executive of Yumari, a manufacturing platform that exports to the US. “What people are doing right now is adjusting their supply chain in order to meet the rules of origin that are required — even if it’s more expensive.”Sellers of about half of the $505.9bn of goods exported to the US last year did not go through the sometimes costly process of complying with USMCA requirements to prove what proportion of components originated in North America.However, about 40 per cent, worth roughly $200bn, went through duty-free anyway, because the US imposed no tariffs on goods such as medical devices, beer and tequila — meaning there was no incentive to complete the extra paperwork. The remaining 10 per cent did face tariffs, but they were mostly fairly low before Trump’s move to increase them. This bucket included goods such as cars, auto parts and electronics that may not comply with USMCA requirements, but also some oil, which had such low tariffs that companies chose to pay the duty instead of dealing with compliance costs, according to Trade Partnership Worldwide, a consulting firm.The new 25 per cent tariff has changed the calculation, pushing businesses to figure out if their goods already are, or can become, compliant.Meeting USMCA regulations is straightforward for many products — Mexico’s economy minister, estimated that 85-90 per cent of exports should meet the rules by April 2. “We’re talking about one or two days,” said Javier Zarazua, a partner at JL Nearshoring Mexico. “It’s a quick process.”However, the remainder is more complicated. The rules are particularly strict for the politically sensitive automobile sector. The Mexican Automotive Industry Association has said 8.2 per cent of cars exported to the US do not comply. For car parts, the figure is 20.4 per cent.For electronics, more than 50 per cent of components generally have to be from North America.“I suspect many electronics will be less likely to qualify,” said Jason Miller, a professor of supply chain management at Michigan State University. “A lot of the components are likely coming from Asia.”Businesses are being forced to make these existential decisions with no certainty about which of the boomeranging policies Trump has proposed will stick.That uncertainty is its own burden, said Díaz Bedolla.“Everything comes to a halt, no one takes decisions,” he added. “If you’re going to impose tariffs, just do it already.” More

Audrey Louail has finally managed to hire the technology workers she needs. That is only possible because her rivals are cutting headcount. “I had a lot of problems recruiting last year, but now there are enough people on the market,” said the chief executive of IT services group Ecritel. A poll of the Croissance Plus network of high-growth companies, which Louail leads, shows a third of its 11,000 members planned to cut staffing this year amid a weak economic outlook and impending fiscal squeeze.“This is the first time it’s been this bad since Covid,” she said of the poll. Official data and business surveys paint a worsening picture of the labour market in the Eurozone’s second-largest economy — undermining President Emmanuel Macron’s years-long efforts to push France to full employment, often defined as a jobless rate of about 5 per cent. The employment rate contracted for the first time in a decade late last year, according to statistics agency Insee. The figure for those aged 16-25 has fallen more sharply, though youth joblessness remains much lower than before Macron took office.“We are at a tipping point,” said Olivier Redoulè, a director at Rexecode research institute. Although job losses had not yet surged, he added, “we’re starting to see the first signs of the labour market going the wrong way — and if that happens, it can take a long time to repair”.Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.Households’ fear of unemployment is climbing. PMI surveys point to widespread headcount cuts, while France’s wage growth has been the weakest among major economies over the past year, according to job search site Indeed. “The labour market weakening is very clear,” said Charlotte de Montpellier, senior economist at ING, who believes France’s jobs market will underperform Germany because of greater political uncertainty, and spending curbs on public sector hiring.Corporate bankruptcies are mounting and lay-offs are piling up, including at big companies such as retailer Auchan and tyremaker Michelin where they are closing two factories. The flow of bad news prompted a relaunch on March 1 of the state-subsidised furlough scheme that helped companies hang on to workers through Covid-era lockdowns. Some content could not load. Check your internet connection or browser settings.The only indicator that remains stable is unemployment, which on Insee’s measure stood at 7.3 per cent at the end of 2024, almost the lowest level since the early 80s.The hiring slump marks a break in a jobs boom that began well before the pandemic, as earlier reforms cutting labour costs, loosening job protections, and lowering corporate tax bore fruit. Since 2020, the workforce has grown by more than a million, fuelled by the rising pension age and subsidies for apprenticeships and vocational training. Those gains have not reversed. “Ten or 15 years ago, unemployment would rise [into double digits] if growth fell below 1.5 per cent,” Stéphane Carcillo, a senior economist at the OECD, said. “Now, even with GDP growth below 1 per cent, unemployment is below 8 per cent. That is pretty new.”A protester holds a placard reading ‘Looking for a fair budget!’ More

Unlock the Editor’s Digest for freeRoula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.Europe needs a “big bang moment” to boost long-term investment in companies and capitalise on this year’s surge in the region’s stock markets, according to the head of Germany’s stock exchange.Stephan Leithner, chief executive of Deutsche Börse, told the Financial Times that EU officials should make the most of investors switching into European markets away from the US as worries over tariffs rise.He wants Brussels to speed up plans to make the bloc more competitive by pushing forward on reforms to encourage domestic investment in the region’s companies.“Many small things have been done but the big bang moment was missing,” he said. “It’s now a moment for a big bang . . . the sense of urgency is there.”Germany’s Dax index has outperformed the US S&P 500 this year as investors dump American equities in favour of European stocks, which are less exposed to the impact of Donald Trump’s tariffs. The Dax has risen 14.8 per cent since the start of the year, while the S&P 500 has fallen 3.9 per cent.The EU has largely escaped the worst of Trump’s barrage of tariffs, which have pushed America into a trade war with major trading partners including Canada and China. Stephan Leithner: ‘It’s now a moment for a big bang . . . the sense of urgency is there’ More

President Donald Trump’s tariffs on Canadian products, along with the escalating trade war and rhetoric between the two nations, is starting to squeeze some small businesses in Vermont.
Concerns for those small businesses include a decline in merchandise shipments to Canadian customers, a drop off in Canadian tourism and higher prices from imported products.
“I would rather take the position of being proactive and not just thinking about absorbing the problem,” said Bill Butler, a co-owner of Artisans Hand Craft Gallery in Montpelier.

Ryan Christiansen, president and head distiller at Caledonia Spirits, giving a tour in Montpelier, VT.
Courtesy: Ryan Christianse | Caledonia Spirits

President Donald Trump’s tariff rhetoric against Canada has only started to heat up, but Vermont’s small businesses are already feeling some pain.
A shipment of spirits, ordered by the Société des alcools du Québec – an entity that’s responsible for the trade of alcoholic beverages in the province – has been sitting on a shipping dock at Montpelier-based Barr Hill by Caledonia Spirits for about a month.

The SAQ called off the order shortly after Trump announced the tariffs against Canada in February, according to Ryan Christiansen, president and head distiller at Caledonia Spirits.
“Customers are ready to buy, and we are in the peak of slow season – it’s an annual cycle for us, and we were looking forward to shipping the order. Now, it’s sitting on the dock,” he said. “To have this hit our business in the slow month of February? We missed our financial plan in February because of this.”

Exports at Caledonia Spirits in Montpelier, VT.
Courtesy: Ryan Christiansen | Caledonia Spirits

Vermont has a special relationship with Canada, as the Green Mountain State exports $680 million in goods to the U.S.’s northern neighbor annually, according to data compiled by Connect2Canada. Vermont imports more than $2.6 billion in goods from Canada each year, with electricity and fuel oil among the top imported goods.
Because of the state’s close business ties to Canada and their shared borders, small businesses in Vermont began seeing some fallout as early as February – when Trump first announced a round of 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada, triggering 25% retaliatory levies from then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. At the time, Ontario also said it would pull American alcohol products from its shelves.
Ultimately, Trump granted a reprieve on Canadian and Mexican goods covered by the North American trade agreement USMCA until April 2. However, many products are still subject to the duties.

“We worked really hard to maintain this relationship with the Canadian government,” Christiansen said. “How do I get them to buy as much as the Canadian customer wanted to buy? Even if the tariffs go away, I think it’s overly optimistic that this order gets resubmitted.”
Tourism worries
It didn’t take long for Steve Wright, president and general manager of Jay Peak Resort, which is about 10 miles from the Canadian border, to begin seeing the impact of the rhetoric around tariffs.
He noted that spending from Canadian tourists showed signs of softening particularly in two key weeks: Quebec break week, which ran from March 3 to March 8, and Ontario break week, which kicked off on March 10.
Though Canadian visitors generally account for about half of the resort’s market, they make up virtually all of it during that two-week stretch, Wright said.

Arrows pointing outwards

People ski at Jay Peak in Jay, VT.
Courtesy: Patrick Coyle, Darla Mercado | CNBC

“The Quebec break week sold really well, and we had great conditions, but what was missing was the day market,” he said. “We did not get the day traffic we usually see from Montreal, that part of the market softened up.”
Tariff rhetoric has only been the latest pressure point for Jay Peak. The resort’s manager also pointed to the reduction in hours of operation for the nearby North Troy, VT border crossing. It went from 24 hours a day to 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in January.
To accommodate its Canadian clientele over the past two decades, Jay Peak has been offering at-par options for these tourists on non-margin products. “Say a lift ticket is $100, you can give us C$100,” Wright said. “That has insulated the business a little bit.”
“They have an affinity for Jay Peak; they have been coming here for a generation, but there is a point where they will decide to stay home despite their love of the place,” he added.
In Montpelier, which is a roughly two-to-three-hour drive from Montreal, worries about tourist traffic are already bubbling among small businesses. This corner of the state tends to see weekend visitors from up north, particularly in the temperate summer and fall seasons.
Bill Butler, a co-owner of Artisans Hand Craft Gallery, has been in talks with fellow entrepreneurs in downtown Montpelier to propose promotional deals for Canadian visitors to keep the foot traffic coming.
“My idea is to have something like ‘Canada Days,'” he said. “We’d have a deal for Canadians who want to come down, have a little tour of the city and go from place to place, and get a free beer or coffee.”
“I would rather take the position of being proactive and not just thinking about absorbing the problem,” Butler said. “We have a great relationship with Canada, and we see a lot of Canadians in the gallery.”
The price of imported goods
For Sam Guy, owner of Guy’s Farm & Yard in Morrisville, tariffs are raising concerns over higher prices for certain products.
Wood shavings, wood pellets and peat moss sold at the local chain store all come from Canada, while animal feed – though made by an American company – includes ingredients that come from Canada, he said.
A 25% tariff tacked onto imported products would inevitably have to be passed on to shoppers.
“We can’t eat this,” Guy said. “We’re going to pass on the tariff. We’re not going to add a margin or anything like that, but a lot of these are low margin products.” More

Five years on from the first pandemic in more than a century it is salutary to recall how working habits were upended, leisure was curtailed and family relations severed because of the Covid-19 lockdown — except, of course, in Boris Johnson’s riotous entourage in Downing Street. Likewise, now that restaurants, theatres and holiday travel are vibrant again, to appreciate how the investment landscape has been radically transformed, leaving us with important questions about how we manage our money.In pre-pandemic days there was little volatility in output and inflation. But everything changed with the Covid-19 lockdown. While central bankers have done well to bring down the ensuing inflationary surge without inflicting big increases in unemployment, inflation is proving difficult to return to target levels. At the same time, higher volatility has become endemic in the markets. Much of that reflects chaotic policymaking by the new Trump administration in Washington, most notably in relation to on-off proposals to impose 1930s-style tariffs on the US’s friends and foes alike. As Steven Blitz, chief US economist at TS Lombard, remarks: “The sum of Trump’s actions can yet skew the economy in any which way, including an implosion of capital spending.”Notwithstanding Donald Trump, and his capacity for economic self-harm, there is no escaping the reality that geopolitics poses a much increased challenge to investors, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and an evermore aggressive China combining to raise volatility. Yet one immense benefit of the Trump administration’s wavering commitment to Nato is that it has caused a dramatic policy shift in Europe, especially in Germany. Friedrich Merz, winner of the German election last month, has pledged to retreat from his country’s long-standing fiscal conservatism and aversion to defence spending by amending Germany’s constitutional debt brake.This is a remarkable watershed and is part of a wider recognition in Europe that military and infrastructure spending has to be increased significantly. A postwar settlement whereby Europeans enjoyed a peace dividend that helped finance generous welfare systems while defence spending declined under the protection of a US security guarantee has been reversed.After years of economic stagnation in the Eurozone, this sea change holds out the hope that fiscally expansionary rearmament will put Europe back in business. And after years of low European stock valuations relative to the US, surging share prices, led by the European defence sector, suggest that global capital is reappraising European prospects.That said, an important factor weighing on markets is the debt legacy of the pandemic and the earlier period of ultra-low interest rates. Across the developed world public debt is now at record levels.Government budgets will be further stretched by the need to support health spending and pensions for ageing populations along with higher defence and climate-related spending. With interest rates having normalised since the inflation rise, borrowing costs on all this debt have risen and will cause pain and mounting defaults as debt is refinanced over time.The good news around this interest rate normalisation is that defined contribution pension scheme members can now earn respectable returns as they de-risk their pension pots by shifting from equities into bonds and cash before retirement. This is in contrast to the pre-pandemic period when bonds — supposedly safer investments than equities — were seriously overvalued.The bad news is that these levels of debt could be financially destabilising. In the judgment of William White, former economic adviser at the Bank for International Settlements, continuing inflationary pressures and higher real interest rates are likely to endure for much longer than most people currently envisage. Thus, he says, a serious global debt crisis seems likely.He also observes that the three recessions preceding the pandemic were all triggered by financial disturbances, each following a long period in which debt was rising faster than GDP and asset prices were also rising rapidly. This is a salutary reminder of how finance has become the Achilles heel of the real economy.Another striking change in the investment landscape over the past five years is the outright victory of passive funds over actively managed funds in terms of market share. This has been a boon for private investors because the very low fees on indexed funds ensure enhanced returns over the long run relative to higher charging active funds which have on average underperformed the indices in recent years.A further advantage of passive investing is that with most defined contribution pension funds investing substantially in benchmarked global equity portfolios, home bias — investors’ preference for assets in their own domestic markets — is eliminated. That tends to enhance performance, although there is growing political concern about pension funds’ neglect of UK equities.Yet with indexing there is a new risk of investment concentration. The percentage of US stocks in the MSCI and MSCI All Country World indices has long been at all-time highs. This partly reflects the enormous market capitalisations of big US tech stocks, notably the so-called “Magnificent Seven”: Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft and Tesla. It follows that markets are vulnerable to the performance of just a handful of corporate giants. This also raises questions about systemic risk.Note here in addition that Elroy Dimson, Paul Marsh and Mike Staunton in the UBS Global Investment Returns Yearbooks have established that over more than a century investors have placed too high an initial value on new technologies, overvaluing the new and undervaluing the old. Also worth noting is that while US equities outpaced European markets from 2010 to 2020 US performance was worse in the decade before, because of the bursting of the dot.com bubble and the subprime mortgage crisis.In sum, we are in a new world of geopolitical friction, increased volatility, greater vulnerability to inflation, excessive debt and heady equity valuations. How should investors respond to this toxic mix?The first priority has to be diversification and a more defensive portfolio stance. Modern portfolio theory (MPT) tells us that if investors add non-correlated assets to their portfolio they can enhance returns and reduce risk. This, according to the late Harry Markowitz, the pioneer of MPT, is the only free lunch in investing.The snag is that even a very diversified portfolio cannot make money in a steep market decline. In a market crash equities and bonds tend to move in lockstep. They cease to be negatively correlated.This makes the case today for an asset that was anathema in the pre-pandemic period, namely cash. Back then the return on cash was dismal. And over the long run cash underperforms equities and bonds. But in periods of extreme volatility it offers genuine diversification against bonds and equities. And in periods of low inflation it is a solid store of value. For private investors, cash is thus a vital portfolio hedge in current circumstances.Another obvious hedge against the plethora of post-pandemic risks is gold. The yellow metal is, in one sense, a paradoxical safe haven. It yields no income and is thus a purely speculative asset. As the great investment sage Warren Buffett once remarked, “Gold gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or some place. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.”Well, yes. But gold has form going back to the ancient Greeks who associated it with the gods. And, as the economist Willem Buiter has pointed out, gold has had a positive value for nigh on 6,000 years, making it the longest lasting bubble in human history. That pedigree means it is a genuine hedge in the present financial turbulence against future inflation and geopolitical risks.  The trouble is that the gold price keeps hitting new peaks, despite the fact that the opportunity cost of holding a non-income producing asset has greatly increased with the normalisation of interest rates.This is probably not the time to head for the exit, not least because central bank reserve managers around the world are seeking alternatives to the world’s fiscally challenged reserve currency, the dollar. But investors should recognise that the gold price tends to overshoot both upwards and downwards over long periods. Those who bought at the peak of the 1971-81 bull market in the metal saw a loss on their investment in real terms of much more than half over the next 20 years.What, then, of the qualities of crypto as a portfolio hedge? The key point is that there is even less underlying value than in gold. Saul Eslake and John Llewellyn of Independent Economics point out that these instruments neither represent a claim on assets (unlike shares or mortgages), nor have they any alternative use (unlike gold, other commodities and property). Their primary uses, they add, appear to be to enable payments by criminals and to scammers, and to provide speculators with more fodder. They are only worth what people in their collective wisdom think they are worth.Meantime, Maurice Obstfeld, former chief economist of the IMF, argues that a fundamental problem with most cryptocurrencies, aside from stablecoins, are that they are disconnected from the real economy and operate beyond the reach of public policy. They thus introduce significant uncertainty into financial transactions, making them an unreliable foundation for economic decisions. Even stablecoins, he adds, are only as good as the assets backing them.So this, compared with gold, is a very immature, low-quality bubble. But judgments about it are complicated by Trump’s declaration that he wants the US to be the “crypto capital of the planet”. This is accompanied by much talk about the creation of a bitcoin reserve to purchase US government debt. Once again, investors and speculators are hostage to potentially chaotic policymaking. Be well advised to leave this minefield to criminals and credulous retail investors taking time off from punting in frothy meme stocks.Is my advocacy of essentially defensive portfolio positioning unduly cautious, you might ask. Good reasons to raise this question include the prospect of almost certainly unsustainable debt-driven expansion in the US under Trump and, in the light of Europe’s shift to a defence build-up, a fiscal lift across Europe. Equally important, we live in a world of asymmetric monetary policy where central banks rush to put a safety net under markets and banks when they collapse, but impose no caps on soaring asset prices. This is potentially a general anaesthetic for permabears.Yet the level of debt in the developed world is extraordinarily high. According to the Institute of International Finance, a bankers’ trade body, global debt hit a record high in 2024 of $318tn. The implication is that bond vigilantes may be due to make a comeback. If this is right, as the British experience of the short lived Liz Truss government suggests, we are heading for an era of greater interest rate instability and potential financial shocks.In this new world, value no longer looks a disaster relative to growth. Government bonds, offering positive real yields, are no longer the pre-pandemic graveyard they used to be. Boring equities look modestly interesting relative to whizzy tech stocks. But in the face of unusually high uncertainty, the mantra has to be diversification. For many private investors, it has been a wild, lucrative five years; now cash should definitely be back on the agenda               More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldThe US has imposed visa restrictions on current and former Thai officials who were involved in the forced repatriation of Uyghur Muslims, as part of a new policy to support groups subject to torture in China.The policy will target foreign officials who are complicit in efforts to forcibly return ethnic or religious minorities at risk of persecution to China.“We are committed to combating China’s efforts to pressure governments to forcibly return Uyghurs and other groups to China, where they are subject to torture and enforced disappearances,” said Marco Rubio, secretary of state. “In light of China’s long-standing acts of genocide and crimes against humanity committed against Uyghurs, we call on governments around the world not to forcibly return Uyghurs and other groups to China.”Rubio said the action against the unnamed current and former Thai officials was a response to their involvement in forcing 40 Uyghurs to return to China in late February. Thailand is a defence treaty ally of the US but the country is nervous about antagonising China, which is much more important to the south-east Asian nation from a trade perspective.The state department did not specify what the visa restrictions would entail, but such measures generally refer to the denial of visas to enter the US. Rubio said the measures could also apply to family members of any officials found to be facilitating repatriations.The Uyghurs are a Turkic ethnic minority from the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang. In 2022, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights accused Beijing of committing “serious human rights violations” in the way it has treated Uyghurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. China has over time forced more than 1mn Uyghurs into detention camps in Xinjiang, sparking criticism from many countries around the world. Beijing has repeatedly denied it has persecuted the Uyghurs.The policy is an early indication of how President Donald Trump will respond to human rights violations involving China. At the end of his first term, then secretary of state Mike Pompeo accused Beijing of committing genocide. His successor in Joe Biden’s administration, Antony Blinken, later repeated the accusation.Rubio was one of the loudest critics of China and its human rights record when he served in the US Senate, alongside Mike Waltz, a former army Green Beret and Florida congressman who is now national security adviser.Many China experts believe Trump wants to reach some kind of wide-ranging deal with Beijing that would involve trade and other issues. One thing they are watching out for is how the president and his officials talk about alleged human rights violations in China given the possible implications for any broader negotiations with President Xi Jinping. More

Unlock the White House Watch newsletter for freeYour guide to what the 2024 US election means for Washington and the worldWall Street stocks rallied on Friday at the end of a volatile week of trading as hopes grew that the US government will avoid a costly shutdown.The blue-chip S&P 500, which on Thursday fell into a correction, rallied on Friday to end the session 2.1 per cent higher — the best day since November 6. All 11 sectors gained ground, with energy and financial services among the best performers. The tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite rose 2.6 per cent, erasing losses from the previous session.The moves came after Chuck Schumer, the top Democrat in the US Senate, signalled his support for a Republican stop-gap funding bill, increasing the likelihood that Congress will avoid the risk of a government shutdown.Friday’s market rally marks a bright spot for US equity investors who have suffered a bruising few weeks as President Donald Trump’s erratic tariff announcements have weighed on confidence and fanned concerns about slowing growth in the world’s largest economy. Data released by the University of Michigan on Friday morning showed US consumer sentiment tumbled in March, with long-term inflation expectations surging to their highest level in more than three decades and unemployment fears rising to levels last seen in 2008. Equity investors nonetheless opted to buy the market dip.“A volatile week is ending with a small flurry of what traders interpret as good news,” said Thierry Wizman, global FX and rates strategist at Macquarie. “The US government isn’t shutting down, China may seek to prop up its consumer sector further, Germany advanced toward fiscal reform and Canada and the US turned down the heat of tariff discussions.”Wizman warned, however, that uncertainty triggered by Trump’s tariff threats remained “problematic”.JPMorgan on Friday became the latest Wall Street bank to lower its 2025 US growth forecast, echoing recent downgrades from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. “Consumers’ concerns about the impact of the Trump administration’s policies are growing,” said Harry Chambers of Capital Economics, adding that the University of Michigan survey would “fan recession flames further”.European stocks ended the day higher, with the region-wide Stoxx Europe 600 up 1.1 per cent and Germany’s Dax rising 1.9 per cent. London’s FTSE 100 rose 1.1 per cent. Asian stocks also closed higher. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index added 2.1 per cent while China’s CSI 300 index of Shanghai- and Shenzhen-listed shares rose 2.4 per cent after Beijing promised fresh measures to “boost consumption”. Japan’s Topix gained 0.7 per cent.In commodity markets, prices for Brent crude, the international oil benchmark, rose 0.9 per cent to $70.51 per barrel. Gold surged to a record high above $3,000 per troy ounce before falling back to $2,981. More