Could we be more optimistic about the future? The next seven days started positively for global geopolitics with the visit of NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg to South Korea and Japan.
He will travel from Seoul to Tokyo on Monday to strengthen the transatlantic security alliance with key partners in Asia. The meeting, which followed the engagement of Japan and South Korea for the first time at a European NATO summit, showed the alliance’s support for the country in the face of security challenges posed by China and North Korea.
The war in Ukraine will be high on the agenda, with Tokyo and Seoul likely to confirm the release of additional equipment that could not affect Kyiv.
A schoolboy stands next to a statue of Mahatma Gandhi in Ahmedabad © Amit Dave / Reuters
On the flip side, this week will also serve as a reminder of the ongoing and real challenges posed by populism and nationalism. India observed Martyrs’ Day on Monday on the 75th anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination. As writer Ramachandra Guha notes in an FT Weekend essay, respect for anti-colonial revolutionaries has waned as Hindu nationalism has risen.
In the US, the figure of former president Donald Trump will loom large again as his adviser Peter Navarro will be tried on Monday for failing to comply with a subpoena from the DPR committee investigating the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol. .
In England, another week of strikes, starting on Monday with driving instructors at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency. The biggest day of action will come on Wednesday when school teachers, train drivers and university lecturers down tools when the TUC trade union body a Defend the Right to Strike Day in opposition to a controversial government bill to block industrial action in essential services.
Economic data
The rate setting schedule has been re-aligned for the monetary policy committees of the Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England.
The ECB is expected to stick with extra large rate hikes as the Fed eases, after signaling it would end a 0.75 percentage point hike in December.
The Bank of England is expected to push through 0.5 percentage point increase, due to persistently high inflation, strong wage growth and the unexpected resilience of the British economy.
Company
Big Tech companies, including Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Meta and Spotify, release their monthly earnings © Mike Segar/Reuters
We are in the thick of earnings season and this week is the peak of Big Tech with quarterly figures from Alphabet, Amazon.com, Apple, Meta and Spotify. It’s been an exciting time for the sector, not least the recognition that they’ve been hiring heavily during the Zoom pandemic.
Apple will be noted as it is expected to break its 14-quarter growth record in the profitable December period due to a lack of high-end iPhones. The November outbreak of Covid-19 at the Zhengzhou factory (known locally as iPhone city) was blamed, resulting in a shortage of between 5 million and 10 million units of the handset.
At about $1,000 a pop, this could come out at a $10bn hiccup, and that’s not good news for Apple given its handset war with Google. The result in this quarter in 2021 is a nudge at $124bn; the forecast is slightly lower for 2022 but the net profit could be bigger.
Read next week’s calendar in full here.