HONG KONG: Tech firms led another rally in Hong Kong stocks Wednesday (Jul 16) after US titan Nvidia said it would resume exports of key chips to China after Washington pledged to remove licensing curbs.
However, other Asian markets were mixed as they weighed Indonesia’s trade deal with Washington and a spike in US inflation that saw investors pare their bets on Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.
California-based Nvidia, one of the world’s most valuable companies, said Tuesday it will restart sales of its H20 artificial intelligence semiconductors to China, having been stopped by US President Donald Trump’s tightened export licensing requirements in April.
CEO Jensen Huang said they would be shipping “very soon”.
The news boosted tech firms around the world, with Wall Street’s Nasdaq rising to another record high, while the S&P 500 and Dow fell.
In Hong Kong, Chinese tech giants Alibaba, JD.com and Tencent jumped to push the Hang Seng Index up around one per cent.
However, the rest of Asia was mixed, with Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul and Manila falling, while Singapore, Wellington, Taipei and Jakarta rose.
The gains in Indonesia came after Trump said a trade deal had been struck with the Southeast Asian country that will see Washington impose tariffs of 19 per cent on its goods, below the 32 per cent previously threatened. US shipments will not be taxed.
The news means the Trump administration has now announced deals with three countries but around two dozen are still in the pipeline just over two weeks ahead of the president’s Aug 1 deadline.
Some have suggested that a healthy run-up on Wall Street over the past few weeks could be giving him confidence to keep the threats up.
