President Donald Trump declared China’s leaders “broke the deal” he was negotiating with them on trade, ratcheting up his rhetoric ahead of fresh negotiations that were already clouded by imminent tariff increases and China’s threats of retaliation.“They broke the deal!” Trump said at a campaign rally Wednesday night in Panama City Beach, Florida, leading him to raise tariffs. The president noted that top Chinese trade negotiator Liu He was traveling to Washington for further talks.

Boosted by the fastest growing middle class in Southeast Asia, Vietnam’s travel industry has seen phenomenal growth which has led to Vietnamese airlines launching direct flights to the United States (US) for the first time.According to the Financial Times, outbound air travel in Vietnam last year grew faster than it ever has and outbound tourism from Vietnam has been growing at an annual rate of 10-15 percent over the past few years according to a Euromonitor report in 2017.

Labour rights violations in ASEAN are among the negative effects of an increase in production due to the ongoing United States (US)-China trade war which has resulted in a shift of some production from China to this part of the world. While the region is embarking on the Fourth Industrial Revolution, numerous industries in ASEAN still rely on labour-intensive factories.

Surging crude prices are posing another headwind for the world economy after United Sates (US) President Donald Trump’s “zero” pledge on Iran oil sales.Brent crude has risen about 33 percent this year and is close to the highest in six months. While higher prices due to strong demand typically reflects a robust world economy, a shock from constrained supply is a negative.Much will depend on how sustained the spike proves to be.

North and South Korea Saturday struck different notes as they marked the first anniversary of a summit between their leaders that fuelled a whirlwind of diplomacy which has died down amid a deadlock over Pyongyang's denuclearisation.Kim Jong-un and President Moon Jae-in held their first meeting on 27 April last year in the Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) dividing the peninsula amid a rapid diplomatic thaw, paving the way for a historic summit between Kim and United States (US) President Donald

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s grand Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is getting a makeover to tone down government rhetoric and tighten oversight, after allegations of corruption and a lack of sustainability dogged some of its highest-profile projects.Beijing is taking a range of steps to exert more control over the program, officials and participants said, including a more muted publicity drive, clearer rules for state-owned-enterprises, restricting use of the BRI brand, and building overseas

North Korea's Kim Jong-un has supervised the test-firing of a new tactical weapon with a "powerful warhead", state media reported Thursday, in the first test of its kind since nuclear negotiations with Washington stalled.The test marks a ratcheting up of tensions weeks after a summit between Kim and United States (US) President Donald Trump collapsed without agreement.It also comes after satellite imagery suggested heightened activity at a nuclear test site.Wednesday's tes

The Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) is set for a revamp, and it is squarely aimed at countering China’s growing geopolitical influence.

United States (US) President Donald Trump said Thursday he is considering a potential third nuclear summit with North Korea's leader."We will be discussing that and potential meetings, further meetings with North Korea and Kim Jong-un," Trump said in the Oval Office at the start of talks with South Korean President Moon Jae-in.A third summit would follow on Trump's historic breakthrough last year, when he met Kim in Singapore, and a follow-up this February in Hanoi that en

Once again, an attack on India by a Pakistan-based terrorist group has raised the spectre of a major confrontation on the Indian subcontinent and fuelled international pressure for Pakistan to take concrete action against the 22 United Nations (UN)-designated terrorist entities it hosts. But this time, the pressure is compounded by fury over attacks by Pakistan-based terrorists on the country’s other key neighbours, Iran and Afghanistan.