Ata mārie and welcome to your Monday summary of international business and political news.
Leading the news, US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order threatening to impose additional tariffs on countries that trade with Iran.
The order uses 25% as an example of what the tariff could be and applied to goods imported into the US from any nation that “directly or indirectly purchases, imports, or otherwise acquires any goods or services from Iran”.
Trump also reiterated "no nuclear weapons" for Iran when speaking from Air Force One after talks between senior US and Iranian officials in Oman, following several weeks of threats from both sides, the BBC reported.
US President Donald Trump.
Elsewhere, Russia’s Federal Security Service said the man suspected of shooting Russian military intelligence officer Vladimir Alexeyev in Moscow has been detained in Dubai and handed over to Russian authorities, CNBC reported.
Alexeyev, deputy head of Russia’s military intelligence arm, was shot several times in an apartment block on Friday local time. He underwent surgery after the shooting.
The Federal Security Service said Russian citizen Lyubomir Korba was detained in Dubai on suspicion of carrying out the shooting.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused Ukraine of the assassination attempt. Ukraine denied any involvement. Alexeyev is the latest high-ranking military figure to have been targeted in the capital, the BBC noted.
Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party has likely strengthened its majority according to an early projection. That was broadly in line with what polls had suggested, CNBC said.
The LDP coalition is projected to win 366 of 465 seats. The snap election followed heightened tension between Japan and China, as well as broader economic weakness.
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi dissolved Parliament in January, a move that was seen as an attempt to strengthen the ruling coalition’s position and also capitalise on high public approval ratings.
Staying with politics, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s chief of staff has resigned over the scandal around Peter Mandelson’s appointment as UK ambassador to the US, and Mandelson’s links to disgraced financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, CNN reported.
“The decision to appoint Peter Mandelson was wrong. He has damaged our party, our country and trust in politics itself,” Morgan McSweeney said.
McSweeney said he took “full responsibility” for advising Starmer to make the appointment last year. “In the circumstances, the only honourable course is to step aside.”
“While I did not oversee the due diligence and vetting process, I believe that process must now be fundamentally overhauled. This cannot simply be a gesture but a safeguard for the future,” McSweeney said.
Saudi Arabia plans to release an updated strategy for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s economic agenda amid ongoing fiscal pressures. Finance Minister Mohammed Al-Jadaan said tourism, manufacturing, logistics and technology were key areas of expansion in the new strategy, Bloomberg reported.
The Saudi government aimed to diversify away from oil and curb its budget deficit, with a focus on spending more efficiently and attracting more private capital and foreign investment.
The International Monetary Fund, among others, had called for more clarity and communication from the Saudi government over its economic agenda and outlook.
Over the Ditch, Reserve Bank of Australia governor Michele Bullock faced the music with politicians in Canberra over last week’s interest rate hike decision amid hot inflation.
During the hearing, Bullock said there were many reasons why inflation had increased in Australia late last year – outlining low unemployment, rising incomes, falling interest rates, tax cuts, and government spending, the ABC reported.
"The [RBA] board judged that monetary policy needed to be tighter, to dampen aggregate demand growth and to help to return the economy to balance over the forecast period," she told MPs.
"The position we're in, although everyone's talking about it quite negatively, it's actually quite positive. The reason we're in this position is because the labour market is still doing really well, and it's stabilised at a relatively low unemployment rate. This is good news, and I think people sort of forget that.”
Recapping the markets, sentiment broadly recovered at the end of the week with Wall Street in a positive mood. However, the tech sector has been an underperformer with ongoing concerns about overinvestment in the artificial intelligence sector.
Capital.com senior market analyst Daniela Hathorn also noted the recent selloff of precious metals appeared to stabilise on Friday local time.
“The markets are likely to remain choppy in the coming days as they rebalance after the heavy moves and fresh data is released next week, with focus on the latest employment data in the US after it was delayed following a four-day partial government shutdown,” she said.
