Trump’s Tariffs Drive Europe to Rethink Its China Trade Relationship

“It is already clear that it will not be easy,” Herman Gref, chief executive officer of state-owned Sberbank, Russia’s largest lender, said of the prospects for the next year at the annual shareholders meeting last month, because loan portfolio quality is deteriorating with companies increasingly needing to restructure their debts. “I hope, as always, we will be able to find joint plans to get through these difficult times,” he added.

China's economic growth exceeded expectations in the second quarter, with gross domestic product expanding 5.2% in April-June from a year earlier. Analysts at Morgan Stanley expect GDP growth to slip below 4.5% in the second half of the year due to "payback of front-loading, weaker global trade amid renewed tariff escalation, and continued deflation loop." Michelle Lam, Greater China economist at Societe Generale SA, said "it's a picture of strong supply but weak domestic demand, and export resilience is not going to last" and described the data as "not a good set of data despite the GDP beat."