FirstFT: Ukraine and US agree minerals deal

Good morning and welcome again to FirstFT Asia. In immediately’s publication:

• Ukraine agrees minerals cope with US

• How the state is propping up China’s housing market

• Singapore’s greatest — and worst — buildings

Kyiv has agreed phrases with Washington on a minerals deal that Ukrainian officers hope will enhance relations with the Trump administration and pave the best way for a long-term US safety dedication.

Ukrainian officers say Kyiv is now able to signal the settlement on collectively creating its mineral sources, together with oil and fuel, after the US dropped calls for for a proper to $500bn in potential income from exploiting the sources.

The unique draft’s extremely onerous phrases — which President Donald Trump offered as a method of Ukraine repaying the US for army and monetary help since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion — provoked outrage in Kyiv and different European capitals. 

Though the textual content lacks specific safety ensures, the officers argued that they’d negotiated way more beneficial phrases and depicted the deal as a method of broadening the connection with the US to shore up Ukraine’s prospects after three years of warfare.

“The minerals agreement is only part of the picture. We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and justice minister who has led the negotiations, advised the FT yesterday.

A Ukrainian official with data of the matter stated that Zelenskyy was planning to journey to Washington on Friday to see Trump and formalise the deal. Listed below are extra particulars on the settlement.

• Extra US information: Trump has ordered a probe into copper dumping within the US, laying the groundwork for imports of the steel to be hit with tariffs.

Right here’s what else we’re maintaining tabs on immediately:

• Financial information: Hong Kong studies fourth-quarter GDP and Australia publishes CPI inflation figures for January.

• Hong Kong: Monetary secretary Paul Chan unveils the town’s 2025 funds.

• Thailand charge choice: The Financial institution of Thailand is predicted to carry rates of interest steady at its financial coverage assembly. (Reuters)

• Nvidia outcomes: The US chipmaking large studies fourth-quarter earnings.

5 extra high tales

1. Unique: A high White Home official has proposed expelling Canada from the 5 Eyes intelligence-sharing community as Donald Trump will increase stress on the nation he has threatened to annex. Peter Navarro is pushing for the US to take away Canada from the 5 Eyes — which additionally contains the UK, Australia and New Zealand — in response to folks aware of his efforts contained in the administration.

2. Taiwan’s coastguard stated it caught a Chinese language-owned freighter within the act of chopping a subsea communications cable off its western coast yesterday. The coastguard stated that it had detained the ship, including that whereas it was unclear whether or not the cable had been severed deliberately, “it cannot be excluded that this was an act of Chinese greyzone harassment”.

3. Huawei has considerably improved the quantity of superior synthetic intelligence chips it could produce, regardless of US efforts to hamper the nation’s capacity to develop delicate applied sciences. Right here’s what the breakthrough means for China’s burgeoning AI business.

• Chinese language manufacturing: China has struggled to develop the most superior machine instruments important to manufacturing, regardless of its big strides in AI, renewable vitality, semiconductors and electrical autos.

4. Shares in Japan’s 5 largest buying and selling homes surged as a lot as 9 per cent yesterday after Warren Buffett signalled Berkshire Hathaway was more likely to enhance its already substantial stakes within the firms on the coronary heart of Japanese business. Berkshire on the weekend revealed its intention to enhance possession and maintain the stakes for “many decades”.

5. A fall in US bond yields is piling stress on the greenback, as traders guess that slowing financial progress will push the Federal Reserve to maintain chopping rates of interest regardless of persistent inflation. The decline has been prompted by a worsened outlook for US progress, after a string of information confirmed weak client and enterprise sentiment.

Visible investigation

As China’s authorities struggles to ease a property disaster, state-owned builders have been shopping for up land. In the meantime, policymakers have unveiled a number of measures to prop up the housing market, together with purchases of full however unsold residences that may finally be used as social housing. However this FT visible investigation reveals such authorities initiatives are leaving unsure penalties for the economic system.

We’re additionally studying . . . 

Chart of the day

Chinese language firms are fuelling nearly one in three new investments in Vietnam, in an indication of how they’ve relocated operations overseas to keep away from Donald Trump’s commerce warfare with Beijing. However this shift is more likely to enhance Vietnam’s vulnerability to tariffs as Trump targets international locations which have racked up large commerce surpluses with the US.

Take a break from the information . . . 

Singapore has grow to be a type of laboratory for excessive structure, the success (or in any other case) of which filters out to the remainder of the world. Listed below are city-state’s greatest — and worst — buildings, in response to FT structure critic Edwin Heathcote.