Starmer’s high-stakes visit to China attracts attention

All eyes are on British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who is embarking on a high-stakes three-day visit to China, the first British prime minister to do so since 2018.

Starmer will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang on Thursday, accompanied by around 60 British businesses and cultural organizations, an official UK statement said. Topics covered trade, investment and national security, highlighting the breadth and sensitivity of the talks.

The travelers included executives from HSBC Group, Aberdeen Group, Airbus, British Airways, AstraZeneca and GSK, suggesting a concerted push to deepen trade ties amid lingering geopolitical tensions.

The visit comes just a day after India and the European Union announced a “groundbreaking” free trade agreement. The move is part of a broader expansion of bilateral trade agreements as countries recalibrate supply chains and trade relationships in response to the US government’s increasingly aggressive use of tariffs.

Just this month, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney became the first leader in his position to visit China in 17 years, aiming to expand economic ties with the world’s second-largest economy.

But the India-EU deal, memorably dubbed the “mother of all agreements” by European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, has yet to overcome its most unpredictable hurdle: US President Donald Trump.

President Trump has imposed punitive tariffs on both friend and foe, but has not yet considered an agreement between India and the EU. His silence is remarkable.

In August last year, the United States imposed high tariffs on Indian goods because of India’s oil purchases from Russia, days after imposing 25% tariffs on New Delhi.

Trump’s recent comments on the EU, including threats related to Greenland, have escalated, with his response casting a permanent cloud over the “historic” agreement. And that cloud darkened even further when U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent criticized the EU’s trade deal with India in an interview with ABC News on Sunday.

But perhaps all is not doom and gloom, and the United States and India are at a “very advanced stage” of reaching a long-awaited deal, Indian Oil and Natural Gas Minister Hardeep Singh Puri told CNBC on Tuesday.

Another cloud weighing on investors’ minds is the US Federal Reserve concluding its policy meeting on Wednesday. While interest rates are widely expected to remain unchanged, Powell’s comments will be closely analyzed amid renewed political pressure on the central bank.

British companies to participate in Starmer’s visit to China. Nearly 60 British businesses and cultural organizations will take part in the British prime minister’s first state visit to Beijing on Thursday in eight years. According to an official UK statement, trade, investment and national security will be on the agenda of the meeting.

The S&P 500 closed at an all-time high. In the U.S. on Tuesday, benchmarks hit intraday highs on a rally in Big Tech stocks ahead of major gains for companies in the sector. The Nasdaq Composite also rose, but the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell. Asian markets traded mixedly, but Korean indexes continued to hit record highs.

Partial shutdown of the US government. That appeared to be a possibility as of early Saturday, largely because Senate Democrats strongly oppose funding for the Department of Homeland Security and other agencies in the wake of the second recent killing of American citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis.

Amazon accidentally sent an email confirming layoffs in its cloud division. The e-commerce giant apparently sent a notice in error on Tuesday acknowledging the company’s “organizational changes.” People familiar with the matter previously told CNBC that Amazon plans to announce widespread layoffs to its entire workforce as early as this week.

(PRO) There are two ways the energy sector can play a role. A review of the energy ETF’s technical and fundamentals indicates that it could break through significant resistance and reach new all-time highs.

Chinese companies are accelerating the rollout of new artificial intelligence models as competition intensifies from US-based rivals OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.

On Tuesday, Beijing-based startup Moonshot AI unveiled Kim K2.5, which it claims has video generation and agent capabilities that outperform all three major U.S. AI models. Agent AI broadly refers to AI systems that can perform tasks on behalf of humans. The ultimate goal is to have sophisticated agents that operate autonomously with minimal user interaction.

This update comes just about three months after Moonshot released the K2 model.

— Evelyn Chen