In the first day of June the markets are still burdened by the same issues as before, though the coronavirus pandemic seems to be receding into the background, while the US-China conflict is becoming more and more important by the day.
The global Covid-19 count surpassed 6.2 million this week. Brazil is the second most affected country after the United States, with over half a million cases. Russia is currently thir with over 400,000 instances of the novel coronavirus. The daily increases in Russia are still quite significant, with thousands of new cases every day. Mexico, India, Pakistan, and Iran are also still seeing large daily increases. In contrast, the situation in Europe and the United States remains stable for now.
Meanwhile, the rift between China and the United States is widening. Today we learned that China is beginning to limit US imports, specifically from the agricultural sector. This comes after on Friday US President Donald Trump stated that Hong Kong will lose its special trade status due to the new security law passed by the Chinese government.
Notably, Trump did not say he will cancel the phase-1 trade agreement, despite threatening to do so multiple times in the past couple of weeks. Economists have argued that abandoning the treaty would be worse for the global economy than sticking with it. Trump is likely to proceed with new tariffs on Chinese goods instead.
Aside from that, it appears that the governments of both China and the United States have something in common - handling protests. China has had Hong Kong pro-democracy protests to contend with since 2019. But the US is now seeing a large wave of - sometimes violent - protests against racially-motivated police brutality across the country.
Donald Trump so far seems to be making the situation worse, encouraging his supporters, many of whom are on the far right political spectrum, to counter-protest, which will put two opposing groups of protesters on the streets, likely causing infighting. Moreover, US police have been using tear gas and pepper spray on people, and have been recorded running over others with their police cars, as well as shooting at peaceful protesters.
