Asian shares are mixed as investors focus on US trade talks with China
[July 29, 2025] By
YURI KAGEYAMA
TOKYO (AP) — Asian shares were mixed Tuesday ahead of a second day of
trade talks between Chinese and U.S. officials, while U.S. futures and
oil prices rose.
Japan's benchmark Nikkei 225 fell 0.8% to 40,674.55 on broad selling of
major companies including automakers and big banks.
Hong Kong's Hang Seng dropped 0.6% to 25,398.83, while the Shanghai
Composite gained 0.3% to 3,607.41.
Analysts said investors were watching for the latest from U.S. President
Donald Trump and U.S. trade talks with talks with China in Stockholm.
U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng
were meeting in the Swedish capital.
“Aside from addressing economic imbalances, tariffs are also now well
entrenched in the geo-political arena,” Tan Boon Heng of the Asia &
Oceania Treasury Department at Mizuho Bank said in a commentary.
Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 edged 0.1% higher to 8,704.60. South Korea’s
Kospi gained 0.3% to 3,230.57.
U.S. stock indexes drifted through a quiet Monday after the United
States agreed to tax cars and other products coming from the European
Union at a 15% rate, lower than Trump had threatened.
Many details of the trade deal are still to be worked out, and Wall
Street is heading into a week full of potential flashpoints that could
shake markets, including an interest rate decision Wednesday by the
Federal Reserve.

The widespread expectation on Wall Street is that Fed officials will
wait until September to resume cutting interest rates, though a couple
of Trump’s appointees could dissent in the vote. The Fed has been on
hold with interest rates this year since cutting them several times at
the end of 2024.
The S&P 500 was nearly flat, edging up by less than 0.1% to 6,389.77 and
setting an all-time high for a sixth straight day. The Dow Jones
Industrial Average dipped 0.1% to 44,837.56, while the Nasdaq composite
added 0.3% to its own record, closing at 21,178.58.

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Persons walk in front of an electronic stock board showing Japan's
Nikkei index at a securities firm Tuesday, July 29, 2025, in Tokyo.
(AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko)
 Tesla rose 3% after its CEO, Elon
Musk, said it had signed a deal with Samsung Electronics that could
be worth more than $16.5 billion to provide computer chips for the
electric-vehicle company. Samsung’s stock in South Korea jumped 6.8%
on Monday, but only 0.3% on Tuesday.
Other companies in the chip and
artificial-intelligence industries were strong, continuing their run
from last week after Alphabet said it was increasing its spending on
AI chips and other investments to $85 billion this year. Chip
company Advanced Micro Devices rose 4.3%, and server-maker Super
Micro Computer climbed 10.2%.
But an 8.3% drop for Revvity helped to keep the market in check. The
company in the life sciences and diagnostics businesses reported a
stronger profit for the latest quarter than Wall Street expected,
but its forecast for full year profit disappointed analysts.
Companies are broadly under pressure to deliver solid growth in
profits following big jumps in their stock prices the last few
months. Much of the gain was due to hopes that Trump would walk back
some of his stiff proposed tariffs, and critics say the U.S. stock
market looks expensive unless companies will produce bigger profits.
Hundreds of U.S. companies are lined up to report how much profit
they made during the spring, with nearly a third of the businesses
in the S&P 500 index scheduled to deliver updates.
In energy trading, benchmark U.S. crude gained 2 cents to $66.73 a
barrel. Brent crude, the international standard, picked up 5 cents
to $69.37 a barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar fell to 148.39 Japanese yen
from 148.56 yen. The euro cost $1.1560, down from $1.1589.
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