Event: Mark Carney

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi arrives at the Prime Minister's Office in Tokyo on Tuesday. | AFP-JIJI Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has rejected criticism that her government responded too weakly to U.S. sanctions against International Criminal Court President Tomoko Akane, pointing to behind-the-scenes efforts to prevent Washington from targeting the Japanese judge.“I do not believe the ‘weak-kneed’ criticism is justified,” Takaichi told reporters on Tuesday, saying Tokyo “pressed the United States at various levels until the last moment” not to designate Akane for sanctions.She added that Japan has consistently supported the ICC as part of its commitment to the rule of law, describing the U.S. action as “incompatible with Japan’s position” and a matter the government “takes very seriously.” In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.By subscribing, you can help us get the story right. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Noriya Kaihara, Honda's executive vice president, said the automaker plans to localize more production of its hybrid powertrains in the U.S. | BLOOMBERG Honda Motor is considering building a new plant in the U.S. as it seeks to expand its lineup of gas-electric hybrids models from 2030, a senior executive at the Japanese carmaker said.The move follows a broader strategic pivot earlier this year, when the Tokyo-based company canceled a trio of battery-electric models earmarked for the U.S. The manufacturer plans to introduce 15 new hybrids by March 2030, primarily targeting North America.Honda, which posted its first annual loss since its founding in 1948 as a result of the strategy shift, now aims to prioritize hybrid and traditional internal combustion engine models. While Honda built its reputation on cars like the Accord — well engineered, efficient and finely attuned to what American buyers wanted — in recent years it has struggled to recapture that formula in its most important market. But its latest hybrids have proved popular with gas-price conscious American buyers. In a time of both misinformation and too much information, quality journalism is more crucial than ever.By subscribing, you can help us get the story right. SUBSCRIBE NOW

Taiwanese prosecutors charged nine people Monday, including one from Nvidia and two from Super Micro, for illegally exporting “high-end AI servers” to mainland China, adding another wave of turbulence in the AI ​​rivalry between China and the United States.Prosecutors said the servers involved were graphics processing units known as “B300,” which have been banned from sale to China.Seventy-four servers arrived in China successfully, according to the prosecutors. Of those, 50 were sent through Indonesia, 16 delivered directly to China and eight sent to Japan first, then Hong Kong, before they landed in mainland China.Another attempt involving 56 servers failed, and the servers remain in Taiwan, said the prosecutor’s office.AI infrastructure, including advanced semiconductors mostly made in Taiwan, has become a key point of competition between the US and China. Washington began imposing restrictions on Nvidia’s exports of advanced chips to China in 2022 and tightened them in subsequent years. In April 2025, the US required licenses for exports of Nvidia’s H20 chips to China before allowing some sales to resume later that year.Under export controls, any sale by Nvidia of high-end AI servers – the computer infrastructure that houses the chips needed to power AI systems – requires a strict review process, according to a document from Keelung District prosecutors’ office in Taiwan. The document also said purchases of more than eight high-end AI servers require company staff to conduct on-site checks to the clients.“We will work with the Taiwan authorities to help them resolve the allegations as quickly as possible,” Patrick Rutherford, an Nvidia spokesperson, said in a written statement.Super Micro said in a written statement that the arrests of two of its former employees were due to its cooperation with the Taiwanese authorities and the company will continue to work to “enhance its robust export compliance program to…

Companies are turning to artificial intelligence and sensor technology to improve the efficiency of indoor farming in Japan as the country faces a growing shortage of farmers.Oishii Farm, which runs a strawberry factory in the United States, recently established a new research and development base in the city of Hamura in western Tokyo. It plans to develop efficient methods for cultivating other crops, such as tomatoes, indoors and robots capable of automatically planting and packaging produce.The company uses AI to manage the breeding environment for bees, which are essential for pollination. The technology has raised the pollination rate for its strawberries to 95%.“We’re able to achieve hundreds of years’ worth of traditional outdoor breeding progress within a single year,” said Hiroki Koga, co-founder and CEO of Oishii Farm, emphasizing the benefits of plant factories unaffected by seasons or weather.In June, telecommunications operator NTT East and other companies launched an aquaponics test in Tokyo that combines the cultivation of Japanese nishikigoi ornamental carp and ginseng.Aquaponics refers to the practice of combining aquaculture and hydroponics, a method of growing plants without soil.By using AI and sensor technology to control lighting and temperature, the project has reduced cultivation periods before shipment from years in conventional outdoor farming to just months.NTT East said leaves and stems containing valuable ingredients, which were previously discarded, can be used for business purposes by using fish feces as fertilizer instead of agricultural chemicals.The number of farmers in Japan whose primary source of income is agriculture has fallen from about 2.05 million in 2010 to about 980,000 in 2026, according to the agriculture ministry.To maintain agricultural production, the government is encouraging participation from other industries and promoting the adoption of advanced technologies. It has set a target of ¥4.6 trillion in public and private investment in plant factories by…

China is building a global network of gold vaults and accelerating central bank reserve buying as part of efforts to promote the yuan’s role in international trade, according to an S&P Global Ratings report on Tuesday.Chinese gold miners, such as the mainland’s largest gold processor Zijin Mining, and Shandong Gold Mining, were also expected to expand “faster than most of their global peers” after Beijing reclassified gold from financial asset to “strategic mineral” in 2025, the report said.“If you are trading in renminbi, there’s always a question as to how you are going to use the renminbi,” said Charles Chang, greater China country lead, corporates, at S&P Global Ratings. “But if that renminbi is convertible to gold, then that’s a potentially different picture. Gold is tradeable. It is usable in a lot of places.”Mainland China launched its first offshore gold delivery vault in Hong Kong last year under an agreement with the Shanghai Gold Exchange (SGE), with Bank of China (Hong Kong) as the designated operator.It could also attract countries looking to diversify, onshore or nearshore their gold storage to enhance controlCharles Chang, S&P Global RatingsAlongside the launch, the SGE listed two new yuan-denominated gold contracts, which can be settled through either physical delivery or cash settlement.Other cities under consideration for China’s vault network included gold trading hubs such as Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Dubai, Riyadh and Moscow, the report said.

Canada will announce retaliatory tariffs against the United States on Tuesday (August 25, 2026), an official familiar with the plans told The Associated Press, escalating a trade fight that has sharply worsened since negotiations with the Trump administration collapsed.The official spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss the plans publicly.Prime Minister Mark Carney said on Monday (August 24, 2026) that Canada may need to move away from matching U.S. tariffs dollar for dollar and instead use more targeted retaliation aimed at protecting Canadian workers and businesses.President Donald Trump escalated the dispute again on Monday (August 24, 2026), telling Canadian leaders to “fall in line” or face consequences “far WORSE” than tariffs already imposed and threatening new 50% tariffs on Canadian vehicles, auto parts and steel.Mr. Carney accused Washington of trying to subordinate Canada and said U.S. trade demands had confirmed Canada's fears that the United States was seeking to dismantle major Canadian industries.“An attitude at the negotiation table that Canada is a subsidiary of the United States” is “not something we're going to accept,” Mr. Carney said.Mr. Carney was even more blunt in French.“We learned during the negotiations that the Americans want to destroy our major industries, including autos, steel and aluminium,” Mr. Carney said. “That was one of the main reasons we said no. It was a bad deal.”The fiery words from both sides show how U.S.-Canada relations have deteriorated since Mr. Carney walked away from trade negotiations with the Trump administration late Friday (August 21, 2026), triggering the President's threatened 50% tariffs the next day on about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.Carney cast doubt on the U.S.'s reliability as a partner, saying Canada was finding reliable partners “everywhere in the world, except in the United States. Except in the United States. And…

U.S. President Donald Trump with Chinese President Xi Jinping. File. | Photo Credit: Reuters United States President Donald Trump is moving toward levying a new tariff on China that would penalise the world's second-largest economy for flooding the global market with underpriced goods, according to three people familiar with the matter.Two of the people who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations still being finalised said Mr. Trump is considering setting the new tariff at 7.5%. It's a level administration officials believe would not endanger the one-year trade truce between Washington and Beijing or a planned White House meeting between Mr. Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping expected to take place in late September.The move, if finalised, appears to be a calibrated effort by the White House to work around a Supreme Court decision earlier this year that struck down Trump's plan to implement a sweeping, high-tariff scheme not seen since the 1930s.After that decision, the Trump administration announced in March it was launching formal investigations targeting excess industrial capacity and forced-labour regulations in China and other nations.It isn't clear if the U.S. administration is also nearing its decision in its probes of the other economies that it announced it was investigating for unfair trade practices, including the European Union, Singapore, Switzerland, Norway, Indonesia, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, South Korea, Vietnam, Taiwan, Bangladesh, Mexico, Japan and India.The White House and the U.S. Trade Representative's office did not respond to requests for comment on the tariff deliberations, which Bloomberg News reported earlier on Monday (August 24, 2026). The Chinese embassy in Washington also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The excess industrial capacity probe of China was initiated under Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, which allows the president to levy tariffs against nations that discriminate…

The South China Morning Post has launched a major data project diving into President Xi Jinping’s signature anti-graft campaign. In the first part of a series accompanying the data project, Phoebe Zhang looks at how the campaign became one of the Communist Party’s most important policies.In the early years of President Xi Jinping’s first term, when graft fighters were taking down senior officials in ways that raised eyebrows, Chinese authorities constantly had to remind the public that the anti-corruption campaign was not “just a gust of wind”.At that point, Beijing had already locked up dozens of senior officials, including Zhou Yongkang, a former member of the Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee, the highest echelon in China’s political hierarchy. Before his downfall in 2013, Zhou had been one of China’s most influential politicians.Concerns were so widespread that the anti-corruption push would be a flash in the pan, especially at the local level, that Wang Qishan, then the party’s top anti-corruption chief, warned that local governments might fall back on temporary “movement-style” crackdowns.A decade later, few need convincing as the anti-corruption fight expands, netting record numbers of senior officials and unearthing new types of graft involving cryptocurrency schemes and clandestine proxies.A new analysis by the South China Morning Post found that the campaign has widened since its inception. Last year, anti-corruption agencies handed down punishments to 983,000 people, with the fallout ranging from mild warnings to investigations and criminal prosecution. The number of senior officials taken down last year was three times that of 2013.The SCMP’s data bank project also found that from 2013 to 2025, 60 per cent of senior officials felled by China’s anti-corruption drive were serving in regional governments. The campaign has hit provincial administrations particularly hard, with resource-rich areas – notably Jiangxi, Liaoning, Shanxi and Hebei provinces, as…

Mark Carney said on Monday that while American negotiators saw the French language in Canada as an “irritant … in Quebec, these are rights,” days after receiving widespread praise from political leaders for rejecting a US trade proposal that many perceived as weakening the country’s Francophone culture.The prime minister’s remarks came hours after the US president, Donald Trump, showed little interest in retreating from the spat, posting on social media that Canada had been “ripping off the United States of America for years” and threatening a swath of new, economically devastating tariffs on cars and trucks.Carney instructed his negotiators to walk away from trade talks last week. Tariffs on an array of Canadian products took effect over the weekend, affecting around 5% of Canada’s exports to the US, and Canada said it will retaliate in early September.On Monday, Carney toured a shipyard with Quebec’s premier, telling attendees Canada “could not accept” a proposed trade deal that would have weakened French language protections after trade talks collapsed between the two countries last week, adding that his government “will not give what they have asked”.The prime minister’s decision to abandon trade talks with the US spurred declarations from political leaders and pundits in Canada that the country is now fully locked into an economic war with its longtime ally.Quebec, Canada’s predominantly French-speaking province, has long sought to protect its distinct identity, at times with laws that clashed with the federal government and the Canadian charter of rights and freedoms.In recent years those rules have also frustrated US negotiators, who have framed them as trade irritants. Bill 96, for example, requires products sold in Quebec to have a French description and for trademarks using generic terms to be translated into French, while Bill 109 compels media services such as Netflix, Spotify and Apple…

Japan's Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi. File | Photo Credit: Reuters A cross-party group of Japanese lawmakers, including one from Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's governing party, headed to Beijing on Monday (August 24, 2026) to meet with Chinese officials for the first time since ties between the two Asian rivals deteriorated after PM Takaichi's comment on Taiwan angered China.Japan seeks a chance to mend its strained ties with China as tensions have spilt over into the economy.The group, which includes Gaku Hashimoto, a lawmaker of PM Takaichi's governing Liberal Democratic Party and a former health and welfare vice minister, and a lawmaker each from two opposition parties, Komeito and the Centrist Reform Alliance, is to meet with Chinese Communist Party officials during their visit through Thursday (August 20)."Communication has been severed in all areas, and we are beginning to see their impact in many areas,” Shinichi Isa, a top spokesperson for the CRA party, told reporters before leaving Tokyo's Haneda airport. “I hope we can somehow find a clue to restart a dialogue.” Mr. Isa, who has served as a diplomat at the Japanese Embassy in China, wrote on X earlier this month that bilateral ties have sunk to their worst since the 1972 normalisation of relations. He wrote that officials had always remained in communication even during previous lows: “Now all channels between officials and ministries have been cut off.” The situation is not in the national interest of either side, Mr. Isa said at the time, and the Chinese side accepted a request from Japanese lawmakers for a “window for dialogue.” Soon after taking office, PM Takaichi said a Chinese attack on Taiwan could constitute “a survival-threatening situation” for Japan that would justify the use of force, enraging Beijing.The remark crossed what China considers a red line in its…