What to watch in Asia today
Events: Leaders and defence ministers gather in Singapore for the Shangri-La Dialogue.
Economic data: China releases purchasing managers’ index data for May, Hong Kong publishes April retail sales and Japan announces inflation data for Tokyo. India’s first-quarter gross domestic product data is due.
Corporate updates: Foxconn, Li Auto, Geely and Xinyi Solar host their annual meetings.
New York City mayor Adams warns against ‘lawlessness’
New York City mayor Eric Adams has said the police force “stands ready” to respond to large-scale protests following the conviction of former president Donald Trump in a “hush money” trial.
“While peaceful protests and assembly will always be protected, we will not be a city of any form of lawlessness,” Adams said in a statement.
Earlier this month the New York Police Department stormed Columbia University to break up pro-Palestine protests. Adams, a former NYPD captain, defended the decision.
On Thursday a Manhattan jury found Trump guilty on all counts of falsifying business records to cover up a “hush money” payment to a former porn actress. He will be sentenced on July 11.
Manhattan DA declines to say whether he will seek jail for Trump
Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg acknowledged Donald Trump was “a defendant unlike any other in American history” but said his office had handled the case the way it would any other.
“I did my job. Our job is to follow the facts without fear or favour. And that’s what we did here,” he said after the verdict on Thursday.
He declined to say whether he would seek a prison sentence for the former president.
“This type of white-collar prosecution is core to what we do at the Manhattan district attorney’s office,” Bragg said.
Trump says trial orchestrated by Biden campaign to ‘hurt an opponent’
Donald Trump insisted he was “a very innocent man” and the victim of a “rigged” trial in his first comments after the guilty verdict was handed down.
Speaking outside the courtroom, the former president argued that the jury pool was pulled from a New York region where he is deeply unpopular, and accused the prosecution of being politically motivated — allegations he has made throughout the trial.
Although the case was brought by a New York state prosecutor in Manhattan, Trump argued it was orchestrated by President Joe Biden in order to damage him politically ahead of the presidential election.
Biden campaign urges voters to keep Trump out of office
US President Joe Biden’s campaign has broken its silence on Donald Trump’s “hush money” trial and said the only way to keep the newly convicted felon out of the White House was to vote.
As the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Trump will still be on the ballot on election day, despite his new status as a convicted felon.
“There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box,” Biden campaign communications director Michael Tyler said on Thursday.
“Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president,” Tyler said.
Donald Trump found guilty in ‘hush money’ trial
Donald Trump has been found guilty of conspiring to buy the silence of a porn actor days before the 2016 election and covering his tracks in business records, becoming the first former US president to be convicted of a crime as he seeks a second term in office.
The unanimous verdict in the Manhattan “hush money” case came at just after 5pm local time on Thursday afternoon, after almost two days of deliberation by the seven men and five women of the jury.
Over the course of the five-week trial, jurors had heard from one-time prominent figures in Trump’s orbit, who outlined a “catch and kill” scheme to suppress a story of an alleged extramarital encounter with Stormy Daniels, after she threatened to go public with her tale.
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Nasdaq Composite notches biggest drop in a month after late tech sell-off
The Nasdaq Composite notched its biggest drop in a month, as an afternoon sell-off took hold.
The tech-heavy index closed 1.1 per cent lower on Thursday, its worst one-day fall since the end of April. The benchmark S&P 500 fell 0.6 per cent, while in contrast to its bigger cousins, the small-cap focused Russell 2000 added 1 per cent.
Investors are now turning their attention to inflation figures on Friday morning, when the personal consumption expenditures price index data are released. Economists forecast the headline index, which the Federal Reserve uses to set its 2 per cent inflation target, to remain steady at an annual pace of 2.8 per cent in April.
US Treasuries recovered ground after a sell-off on Wednesday. The yield on the 10-year note fell 0.08 percentage points to 4.55 per cent. The yield on the two-year note dropped by 0.06 percentage points to 4.93 per cent.