Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is scheduled to meet President Donald Trump at the White House on March 19, a summit that carries substantial implications for bilateral trade, defense procurement, and the broader management of Japan-China tensions. Trump announced the meeting date before Japan’s February 8 election and has cultivated a notably warm relationship with…
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz, now entering its second week following the onset of U.S.-Israeli military operations against Iran on February 28, is producing the most significant global energy disruption since the 1970s oil crises. Commercial shipping through the strait, which normally carries approximately 20% of the world’s crude oil and a…
China’s National People’s Congress opened its annual session on March 5 in Beijing, convening nearly 3,000 delegates to approve the 15th Five-Year Plan covering 2026 to 2030, set a GDP growth target of 4.5% to 5% for the current year, and ratify a fiscal framework that prioritizes technology self-reliance, domestic demand expansion, and strategic industrial…
Japan’s Nikkei 225 index crossed the 58,000 level for the first time on Monday, extending a rally that has added more than 12% since the start of the year and propelled the benchmark to repeated record highs. The advance, initially driven by semiconductor and AI-related stocks tracking gains by their U.S. counterparts, has broadened over…
India is projected to grow between 6.5% and 7.8% in the fiscal year concluding in March 2026, according to forecasts from the Asia House Annual Outlook and Deloitte, positioning it as the fastest-growing major economy in Asia and a primary beneficiary of the supply chain diversification trend that has intensified under successive rounds of U.S.-China…
Average DRAM prices, including high-bandwidth memory, rose between 50% and 55% in the first quarter of 2026 compared with the fourth quarter of 2025, according to TrendForce estimates, marking one of the sharpest quarterly increases in the history of the memory industry. The price acceleration, driven by insatiable demand for AI-focused memory chips and a…
Two weeks after securing the largest parliamentary majority for any Japanese party since 1955, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s government is moving to implement the fiscal expansion that defined her election campaign. The 2026 budget, which had been delayed by the snap election, is expected to proceed through the Diet with minimal opposition resistance now that…
China confirmed a GDP growth target of 4.5% to 5% for 2026 as leaders prepared for the annual National People’s Congress session in March, where the 15th Five-Year Plan covering 2026 to 2030 will be formally adopted. The target, slightly below the 2025 goal of “around 5%,” reflects acknowledgment that the economy faces persistent headwinds…
Samsung Electronics confirmed on Thursday that it had begun commercial shipments of its sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory chips, HBM4, to customers. The announcement, which Bloomberg reported sent Samsung shares up as much as 7.6% on the Nextrade exchange to an all-time high, marks the first verified delivery of HBM4 at production scale by any manufacturer, a…
Singapore Prime Minister Lawrence Wong delivered the country’s 2026 Budget on Thursday, unveiling a comprehensive set of measures that position artificial intelligence as the primary engine of Singapore’s next phase of economic development. The Budget, which projects a fiscal surplus of SG$8.5 billion for the 2026 financial year, combines household cost-of-living relief with a structured…
