Finance

The U.S. and Chinese presidents met Thursday in South Korea after months of escalating trade tensions.
Many in China saw the meeting as positive, and looked forward to the U.S. lowering tariffs.
“China-U.S. leaders’ Busan Summit” was the top trending hashtag on Weibo, a social media platform similar to X.

A screen shows news footage of the bilateral meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in South Korea’s Busan, at a restaurant in Shenzhen, Guangdong province, China October 30, 2025.
Tingshu Wang | Reuters

Many people in China cheered the meeting Thursday between President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump, after months of escalating bilateral tensions.
Every time the two leaders meet, it helps ease tensions and creates a “positive atmosphere,” Alex Hongcai Xu, chair of Beijing Honglve Consulting, said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. “This atmosphere is beneficial for negotiations.”

“Each side lowering tariffs to below 10% would benefit capital flows and cooperation,” Xu said. He noted that China can likely buy more U.S. soybeans and U.S.-made Boeing airplanes.
Trump said Thursday after the meeting that the U.S. would halve a 20% fentanyl-related tariff on China, bringing the total duty on Chinese goods to 47%. That marked a sharp reversal from his earlier threat to impose an additional 100% tariffs on China starting Saturday.
But Trump gave few details on whether the U.S. would encourage more Chinese investment, saying only that “they have investments [in the U.S.] and they will invest.”
Xu said he hoped Washington would allow more Chinese companies to invest locally, which he said would create jobs in the U.S. and boost domestic production while reducing Chinese exports.
Chinese businesses, for their part, have been seeking opportunities abroad as the domestic economy slows.

“If the U.S. policy can be more certain, or offer the prospect of lowered tariffs, then at least Chinese investments in other countries can increase,” said Luke Li, who works in energy-related manufacturing and trade in Beijing, according to a CNBC translation of his remarks in Chinese.
“As long as they meet, there will be progress,” Li said, noting that “we are most focused on U.S. tariffs on China, whether this will be adjusted.”

As Xi and Trump met in South Korea Thursday morning local time, “China-U.S. leaders’ Busan Summit” was the top trending hashtag on Weibo, a social media platform similar to X.
“Interest Rate Cut” was the second most-popular hashtag, while the fourth-ranked trending topic also centered on the Trump-Xi meeting.
Most of the posts, however, were by Chinese news outlets. User comments were brief, such as “long live China-U.S. friendship” and “China-U.S. mutual success,” according to a CNBC translation. It was unclear whether each comment represented a separate user.
On the trendy Xiaohongshu, or RedNote, app, one of the few posts on the summit was by economist and frequent social media commentator Song Qinghui, who wrote in Chinese: “Look forward to the early arrival of the China-U.S. honeymoon period.”

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Beijing restricts access to X and many other U.S. social media platforms, while maintaining tight control over domestic news outlets.
While Chinese state media initially focused on Beijing’s latest space exploration plans and downplayed the Trump-Xi meeting — opting to highlight Xi’s attendance at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation Economic Leaders’ meeting instead — official coverage ramped up after the talks began. The Chinese foreign ministry didn’t confirm the Trump-Xi meeting until Wednesday afternoon.
State broadcaster CCTV, which spent much of Thursday morning covering China’s latest Shenzhou-21 space mission, began sending regular updates about the meeting only after the two leaders met.
China’s official readout of Xi’s opening remarks said Beijing was ready to work with Washington, quoting Xi as saying that “China’s development and revitalization goes hand in hand with President Trump’s vision to ‘Make America Great Again.'”
“Trump [has been] overly confident. He doesn’t listen,” Xu said, referring to the U.S. president’s focus on ramping up tariffs.
“If the U.S. and China are in a mess, can the U.S. become great again?” he said. “No way.” More

Catastrophe bonds, debt instruments that pay out when a natural disaster befalls a country, are intended to spread the pain. Some places face a concentrated risk from earthquakes, floods or hurricanes—the sort that would normally register as just another headline from a far-flung land to many investors. Sharing the cost between these places and such investors, for a price, can benefit both. That looks likely to be the case for Jamaica, where Hurricane Melissa, the worst storm ever to hit the Caribbean island, made landfall on October 28th. To help with relief efforts, the country will get a $150m payout from a bond issued in 2024. More

Brazil’s presidential palace was designed to project calm power. Oscar Niemeyer, the country’s great modernist architect, gave it marble columns that curve like Brazil’s rivers and seem to float on a still reflecting pool—a poised emblem of national sovereignty. But the calm can be deceptive. In 2023 a mob inspired by Jair Bolsonaro, a hard-right former president, stormed its gates. Pressure can come from abroad, too: in July President Donald Trump imposed tariffs of 50% on Brazilian goods out of pique at the prosecution of Mr Bolsonaro. Although Mr Trump and Brazil’s president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (known as Lula), had warm words for each other after a meeting in Malaysia this week, the episode shows how easily the superpower can reach into Brazil’s politics. It also provides a lesson about how to conduct trade policy in Mr Trump’s world. More

The U.S. wants Beijing-based ByteDance to divest U.S. operations of TikTok, but it has remained unresolved for months.
President Donald Trump did not mention TikTok following his meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on Thursday.
China’s Commerce Ministry said Thursday that Beijing would work with the U.S. on resolving TikTok-related issues.

Dado Ruvic | Reuters

Beijing will work with Washington to “properly resolve” issues around the divestiture of the U.S. operations of TikTok, China’s Commerce Ministry said in a statement Thursday, according to a CNBC translation.
The ministry did not provide a timeframe or any further details. The comment followed a high-stakes meeting earlier in the day between U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping, the first in-person gathering of the leaders since Trump took office in January.

Trump did not mention TikTok in his remarks with reporters following his meeting with Xi. Instead, he outlined how the U.S. will roll back some tariffs on Chinese goods, while Beijing will postpone its latest rare earths restrictions.

“It’s the lack of specifics that will most certainly add to policy miscalculation risk,” Louise Loo, head of Asia economics at Oxford Economics, said in an email. “We don’t think there’s enough as yet to believe Beijing’s interests in the TikTok contention truly aligns with President Trump’s motivations to spin off the entity’s US business.”
ByteDance and TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
According to U.S. national security law, Beijing-based ByteDance must sell TikTok’s U.S. operations or effectively be banned in the country. China has yet to approve terms of a deal that would allow a new joint-venture company to oversee TikTok in the U.S. More

In Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, Chinese e-commerce players have quickly come to dominate around half of the online shopping market, Bain and Company said in a report Thursday.
“Far from being killed by tariffs, the internationalization of Chinese retail is entering a new phase,” the consulting firm said.
The findings come as companies expand the Singles Day shopping event from China to more countries this year.

A woman poses for a selfie next to signage for e-commerce giant Alibaba in the Xuhui district in Shanghai on Feb. 22, 2025.
Hector Retamal | Afp | Getty Images

Alibaba and ByteDance’s TikTok Shop are just some of the Chinese e-commerce players that have quickly come to dominate around half of the online shopping market in several Southeast Asian countries, consulting firm Bain and Company said in a report Thursday.
In Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines, Chinese online shopping players — such as Shein and PDD’s Temu — account for roughly 50% of the local e-commerce market, data for 2024 showed, according to the report. It indicated the Chinese companies have also gained a foothold in the growing online commerce market in countries from the U.S. to Brazil.

The findings come as Chinese companies are accelerating their global expansion, amid slowing economic growth at home — and despite escalating U.S.-China trade tensions.
“Far from being killed by tariffs, the internationalization of Chinese retail is entering a new phase,” the report said. Its authors noted that the Chinese sellers have so far tended to perform better “in markets with lower online purchasing power.”
This year, Bain pointed out, Alibaba’s Taobao is expanding Singles Day shopping promotions to 20 regions — meaning the world’s biggest shopping event is no longer just a factor for China but markets where rival Amazon.com has pushed its Black Friday sales.

It’s not immediately clear the extent to which Singles Day was promoted outside China in past years. But the ramp up is recent. Taobao in Malaysia last year announced it would be the first time the shopping event would be promoted in English, in addition to Chinese.
Alibaba’s international division — called “International Digital Commerce Group” — reported 19% year-on-year revenue growth in the three months ended June 30 to 34.74 billion yuan ($4.85 billion).

That was slightly more than what the company’s cloud computing unit brought in, but still far less than the 140.07 billion yuan in revenue generated by Alibaba’s China e-commerce business, which saw slower growth at 10%. Similar to Amazon.com, merchants open accounts on Alibaba’s platforms to sell directly to consumers.
One signal of how quickly Chinese sellers are expanding their online sales abroad comes from financing numbers.
In just over a year, fintech startup FundPark has facilitated $3 billion in loans to small Chinese businesses for overseas e-commerce — it had previously taken the company six years to lend the same $3 billion amount, Anson Suen, co-founder and CEO, told CNBC.
FundPark, which has received $750 million in financing from Goldman Sachs and HSBC, assesses how much small merchants can borrow by using its tech-based data analysis. The startup on Tuesday announced it raised $71 million to support its new artificial intelligence-powered tool for “dynamic funding” that can help merchants navigate tariff uncertainties.

Taking China learnings abroad

Part of the Chinese e-commerce companies’ success comes from lessons learned in their home market that integrate livestreaming, rapid product innovation and speedy logistics, Bain analysts pointed out.
In fact, Amazon shut down its China marketplace in 2019 amid rising competition from domestic players.
The country’s giant market has provided fertile training ground.
At $2.32 billion in gross merchandise value sold last year, the Chinese e-commerce market is more than twice the size of the U.S., which saw $1.05 billion in GMV last year, Bain said. GMV is a measure of sales on an ecommerce platform over a period of time.
In Southeast Asia, Indonesia was the largest market with $62 billion in e-commerce GMV last year, while Thailand and Vietnam each recorded $30 billion in GMV, Bain said. The Philippines saw $20 billion in 2024 GMV, while Singapore’s was far smaller at just $8.55 billion.
But it’s far from a straight path to growth for Chinese players in every market.
Bain pointed out that in Singapore, Alibaba’s Lazada had lost market share to the local incumbent Shopee, while Amazon and Walmart still dominate in the U.S.
While PDD, Alibaba and ByteDance divide up most of the Chinese market, the U.S. is a far different story, with Bain data showing that non-Chinese e-commerce players accounted for nearly 95% of the market.

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The U.S. e-commerce giants also have a large international presence.
Amazon reported net sales in North America of $100.1 billion in the quarter ended June 30, while international sales were $36.76 billion, meaning the U.S. e-commerce giant still makes more in net sales than Alibaba at home and abroad. The U.S.-based e-commerce giant is set to report earnings Thursday local time.
Walmart reported $23.7 billion in online U.S. sales in the quarter ended July 31, and $8.3 billion overseas — up 22% from a year ago, according to CNBC calculations.
— CNBC’s Victoria Yeo contributed to this report. More

U.S. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell holds a press conference after the Fed cut interest rates by quarter of a percentage point, in Washington, D.C., U.S., Oct. 29, 2025.
Kevin Lamarque | Reuters

The Federal Reserve meeting that wrapped up Wednesday both delivered on expectations and offered a few surprises. Here are five key takeaways:

The Federal Open Market Committee, as expected, delivered its quarter percentage point rate cut, but not without some backstage intrigue that included two dissenting votes — one in each direction. While Governor Stephen Miran delivered a widely anticipated “no” vote because he preferred a half-point reduction, Kansas City Fed President Jeffrey Schmid wanted no cut, speaking for what is an apparently growing group of inflation hawks who are worried about the Fed’s easing bias.
Using uncharacteristically strong language, Chair Jerome Powell pushed back hard on another cut in December for which markets had been assigning about a 90% probability of happening. “In the committee’s discussions at this meeting, there were strongly differing views about how to proceed in December,” Powell said during his news conference. “A further reduction in the policy rate at the December meeting is not a foregone conclusion. Far from it.” He went on to note there were “strongly different views” expressed by the 19 meeting participants and noted that the tone would be reflected in the meeting minutes, released in three weeks.
Markets knew the end of QT was coming, but just weren’t set on when. The committee laid that to rest and said quantitative tightening, or allowing assets to roll off the Fed’s $6.6 trillion balance sheet, would end after the November operations. While Powell doused talk of a December cut, ending QT then could have a similar impact. At the same time, the committee indicated it would be reinvesting maturing mortgage notes in short-term bills, which Powell said will tilt the balance sheet to shorter duration with an even stronger lean toward Treasurys.
On the question of inflation, Powell gave indications that it is drifting back towards the Fed’s 2% goal but remains elevated — around 2.8% by the Fed’s preferred measure. Tariffs are providing a boost to that number in the half percentage point range, but Powell said the view continues to be that the impact from the levies will be temporary. The inflation forecast for October is significant in that the Commerce Department will not be releasing an official number on the personal consumption expenditures price index due to the government shutdown.
Powell gave a nod towards the uncertainty from the shutdown, but said the lack of public data likely doesn’t change the economic picture, one of moderating growth, rising unemployment and “somewhat elevated” inflation. “Although some important federal government data have been delayed due to the shutdown, the public and private sector data that have remained available suggests that the outlook for employment and inflation has not changed much since our meeting in September,” he said.

What they’re saying:

“He kind of did a WWE slam on those expectations of a December rate cut. [The door is] not completely closed, I guess, but it was expected to be a foregone conclusion. And he came out pretty vociferously and said, ‘Nope, better not think about it that way.'” — Dan North, senior economist at Allianz

“So, regardless of the use of alternative data sources the Fed can draw on, we believe there is an increased chance that December’s meeting may skip a cut, which would push off further accommodative rate moves into the new year, and potentially to a new Chair.” — Rick Rieder, head of fixed income at BlackRock and finalist for Powell’s job when his term as chair expires in May
“He tried to say it is not a foregone conclusion, but a December rate cut still seems likely. No Fed leader wants to be responsible for a slowdown or a recession.” — Heather Long, chief economist at Navy Federal Credit Union More

Mumbai was built on the proceeds of a stockmarket boom. During the American civil war, money rushed into the city, then known as Bombay, as merchants sought alternative sources of cotton to the blockaded southern states. The boom spread from textiles to railways, to link cotton-growing districts with the coast, and to land-reclamation companies, to fill the gaps between the city’s seven islands. New land provided newly flush brokers with space for new houses. The frenzy ended, but many of the companies endured. More

Fiserv shares closed out their worst day ever after the fintech company slashed full-year guidance.
“Our current performance is not where we want it to be nor where our stakeholders expect it to be,” wrote CEO Mike Lyons in a release.
Fiserv added three new board members and announced a new CFO and co-presidents.

Cheng Xin | Getty Images News | Getty Images

Fiserv’s stock plummeted 44% Wednesday, closing out its worst day ever after the fintech company cut its earnings outlook and shook up some of its leadership team.
“Our current performance is not where we want it to be nor where our stakeholders expect it to be,” wrote CEO Mike Lyons in a release.

For the full year, Fiserv now expects adjusted earnings of $8.50 to $8.60 a share for the year, down from a previous forecast of $10.15 and $10.30. Revenues are expected to grow 3.5% to 4%, versus a prior estimate of 10%.
During an earnings call Wednesday, Lyons said Argentina’s deteriorating economic environment contributed to slowing growth and margin disappointment. Last year, the South American country contributed 10 percentage points to its 16% organic growth rate, he said.
Fiserv’s original growth estimate “assumed that to compensate for the slowdown, our non-Argentinian businesses would grow significantly faster than their historical mid-single-digit range,” he said.
Adjusted earnings came in at $2.04 per share, falling short of the LSEG estimate of $2.64. Revenues rose about 1% from a year ago to $4.92 billion, missing the $5.36 billion forecast. Net income grew to $792 million from $564 million in the year-ago period.
Along with the results, Fiserv announced a slew of executive and board changes.

Read more CNBC tech news

Beginning in December, operating chief Takis Georgakopoulos will serve as co-president with Dhivya Suryadevara, recent CEO of Optum Financial Services and Optum Insight at UnitedHealth Group. Fiserv also promoted Paul Todd to finance chief.
“We also have opportunities in front of us to improve our results and execution, and I am confident that these are the right leaders to help guide Fiserv to long-term success,” Lyons wrote in a separate release.
Fiserv also announced that Gordon Nixon, Céline Dufétel and Gary Shedlin would join its board at the beginning of 2026, with Nixon serving as independent chairman of the board. Shedlin is slated to lead the audit committee.
The Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based company also announced an action plan that Lyons said would better situate the company to “drive sustainable, high-quality growth” and reach its “full potential.”
Fiserv said it will move its stock from the NYSE to the Nasdaq next month, where it will trade under the ticker symbol “FISV.”
Fiserv did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment. More