JSE likely to cheer US-China trade talks

Asian markets were also relieved on Wednesday morning that Trump’s 9pm New York time televised address on Tuesday night turned out to be a damp squib.

A Bloomberg story titled “Trump’s prime-time bid to end border wall impasse falls flat” said: “Donald Trump summoned the nation’s attention to the Oval Office on Tuesday for a prime time pronouncement on the border wall standoff at the centre of the government shutdown. Then, he offered nothing new.

“Instead, Trump used the president’s most symbolic and powerful perch — traditionally reserved for times of war or calls for national unity — to rattle off familiar statistics, renew complaints about Democratic criticism of his plan to build a wall on the Mexican border and reprise ominous anecdotes of brutal crimes committed by people he said were in the country illegally.”

Trump’s address gave US government workers, who have not been paid for the past three weeks, little hope that the impasse in Congress will end soon.

The rand, which weakened back over R14/$ and R16/€ on Tuesday, was back to R13.94/$, R15.97/€ and R17.75/£ at 6.50am.

Source: businesslive.co.za