Limiting investment by American Companies in the chinese tech sector because of Serious National Security risks. It would require us firms to disclose investments in sensitive areas such as Artificial Intelligence and ban some investment altogether. Beijing has reacted angrily saying it is gravely concerned about the order. A spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in washington says the curbs seriously undermine the interests of chinese and American Companies and investors. Republicans have said they do not go far enough. This is a new front in the tech war between two global superpowers, the restrictions prevent American Private equity and Venture Capital firms from investing in high tech sectors investing in high tech sectors in china, such as quantum computing, Artificial Intelligence and advanced semiconductors. The goal is to stop us capital in know how speeding up the development of technologies that could help china develop weapons for use against america in a military conflict. I
I mean, these figures for trade are actually even worse than economists had anticipated in terms of exports. Its the weakest data since back in february 2020, when china, of course, was right in the thick of the pandemic. Why is this data so bad . Well, its mainly to do with chinas customers abroad. Theyre really struggling with high inflation, high Interest Rates. So theyre spending less money on chinese goods. And if youre a policymaker in beijing, well, its difficult to say what you should do about that. You cantjust force other countries to start buying more of your goods. But theres also more to contend with. If you look at the spending within china, thats also looking not very encouraging at the moment. Tomorrow, were expecting some more figures to be coming out, which will probably show Deflation Prices actually going down in china. Thats a bit more difficult to explain. But there are some people who think that chinas Zero Covid Policy went on for so long that customers just are
Quite simply they are doing this because of inflation and the rate of Price Increases and the International Comparisons are clear, although inflation is falling, in the uk it is not falling by as much or down to as low a level as it is elsewhere in europe in the us, and the us, and the bank has been talking up food prices and the amount we pay for services and the speed that wholesale, lower wholesale prices are being passed through the supply chain to us. The bank talked about crystallising risks, essentially the fear that when it comes to private sector wage growth, rings might be becoming embedded so they argued they needed to continue acting despite the impact it will have on households and businesses and we know the impact it will have on uk households and Mortgage Holders and also those ran singh. Also a warning from the bank also those renting. They said the rates will be high for a while, they are expecting inflation to meet the target of the Prime Minister, to half inflation t
Projection that we present today is very much into parts. Im going to begin with the first part. Starting near term outlook. This chart shows the evolution of Consumer Price inflation and its components since 2018. It shows that inflation has come off the peak in october last year and that it continues to fall over the rest of this year in our near term projection. Thats the piece showed in the shade of part of the chart. This fall can be attributed in large part to a full on contribution from energy. Fuel prices have declined, electricity and gas prices have stabilised, albeit at a higher level. The Dark Orange Bars on this chart show how the contribution from Energy Prices falling and turning negatively in the coming months. Giving off gems price cap on energy and gas bills, we expect inflation to take a further step down in the july dates will be published in two weeks time. That will come down to around 7 at that point. Following a larger step down in 0ctober s data to around about