Asia mixed in early trade as US-China tariff talks end with no breakthrough

FAN Editor

Asia markets were mixed in early trade on Friday as investors reacted to an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China, developments in Australian politics and economic data from Japan.

In Australia, the ASX 200 was up 0.27 percent with most sectors trading up. Shares of the so-called Big Four banks traded mixed; ANZ was down 0.21 percent, Westpac fell 1.27 percent, Commonwealth bank was up 0.58 percent and the National Australia Bank added 0.22 percent.

Australian politics will be a key focus in Friday’s trading session as senior ministers deserted the besieged Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after he narrowly won a leadership vote against the former Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton earlier in the week.

According to reports, Turnbull is set to face another leadership challenge that could potentially see a new Australian prime minister. The political uncertainty has weighed on the Australian dollar, which declined from levels above $0.7350 earlier this week to trade around $0.7240 at 8:14 a.m. HK/SIN.

In Japan, the Nikkei 225 rose 0.3 percent while the Topix index gained 0.34 percent.

Government data released before the market open showed Japan’s core consumer prices in July rose 0.8 percent from a year ago, but was unchanged from the previous month’s gain. That number fell slightly short of market expectations but it remains notably far off from the Bank of Japan’s 2 percent inflation target.

South Korea’s Kospi index fell 0.41 percent as some of the major blue chip names declined. Shares of electronics giant Samsung fell 1.1 percent while Posco was down 0.6 percent and Hyundai Motor was off by 0.4 percent.

The session in Asia followed slight declines on Wall Street, where the ongoing trade war between the United States and China and worries of renewed legal issues for President Donald Trump dampened investor sentiment.

Trade talks between U.S. and China officials, who were seeking to end the impasse, concluded on Thursday without major developments. That same day, a new round of U.S. tariffs on $16 billion worth of Chinese imports kicked in, prompting Beijing to retaliate with its own levies on American goods worth the same amount.

Elsewhere, the U.S. dollar index, which measures the greenback against a basket of currencies, traded at 95.670 at 8:21 a.m. HK/SIN. The Japanese yen traded at 111.36 to the dollar, weakening from levels below 110.5 earlier in the week .

— Reuters contributed to this report.

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