Tariff Man Back, ECB Negative Risk, Lowflation Spreads: Eco Day

(Bloomberg) -- Welcome to Wednesday Asia. Here's the latest news and analysis from Bloomberg Economics to help get your day started:

• President Donald Trump reminded financial markets that he's comfortable heading into an election year using tariffs as his main source of international economic leverage, with a flurry of trade threats across three continents in the span of 24 hours
• ECB officials face increasing push back against their negative interest-rate policy in private engagements with the region's finance ministers, particularly from northern Europe
• For years low inflation looked like a classic rich-world problem. Now, developing economies are tackling this too
• Canada's immigration-driven population boom gets credit for driving employment gains, bolstering housing markets and keeping the nation's expansion running. But it's also masking a deeper economic problem: sluggish productivity gains
• Bank of Canada Governor Stephen Poloz, one of the few central bankers to resist the global push toward easier monetary policy, will probably maintain his wait-and-see approach this week and hold the benchmark interest rate
• Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn stood by his election campaign claim that the U.K.'s National Health Service would be under threat from a post-Brexit trade deal with the U.S., even as Trump said it wouldn't be part of negotiations
• New Zealand recorded the fastest gains in house prices in 12 months, with prices rising by 3.3%y/y in November
• The euro area can't spend its way to sustainably higher inflation, raising a question mark over whether urging countries to deploy fiscal stimulus is actually effective
• If you are a believer in the consensus that Trump's trade wars have peaked then Monday was a very bad day and Tuesday isn't much better, writes Shawn Donnan in the latest Terms of Trade
• The death of the U.K. high street hit female workers hardest and digital disruptions mean employees need to retrain. Retail is the largest private sector employer in the U.K. with 2.9 million people
• Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron sparred in front of reporters over Turkey's future in NATO and other differences, hours after the U.S. president assailed his French counterpart for “very nasty” comments about the military alliance that's celebrating its 70th anniversary in London

To contact the reporter on this story: Alexandra Veroude in Sydney at averoude4@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Nasreen Seria at nseria@bloomberg.net, Michael Heath

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