Emerging-market assets retreated amid lingering threats to global growth, even as reports suggested the U.S. and China had reached consensus on the main topics in their trade talks on Friday. Currencies posted their worst weekly slide since mid-December, while stocks deepened their monthly decline.

Highlights:
The U.S. and China are said to have reached a consensus in principle on the main topics in their ongoing trade negotiations, with talks set to resume in Washington
President Donald Trump had earlier hailed progress and said he may extend a tariff truce and take steps to sell a potential deal to opposition lawmakers
The Trump administration said the U.S. president still wants to meet China’s Xi Jinping in an effort to end the trade war
Trump said he’ll declare a national emergency on the U.S. southern border in a bid to unlock more money to build his proposed wall
India’s inflation eased to a 19-month low in January, helping justify the central bank’s decision to lower interest rates and opening the door to further cuts. Consumer prices rose 2.05 percent from a year earlier, below the 2.5 percent median estimate
A bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation to punish Russia for interfering in U.S. elections and for exerting “malign influence” in Syria and its aggression in Ukraine, setting up a potential clash with President Trump
The rand was the worst performer among emerging currencies as South Africa’s biggest labor group staged a nationwide protest against job losses Wednesday, the latest setback for an economy reeling from days of rolling power cuts
Saudi Aramco picked JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Morgan Stanley to manage its first-ever international dollar-bond sale to fund the acquisition of petrochemical giant Sabic, according to people with knowledge of the matter
Brazil’s government said it would present proposals to raise the minimum retirement age for women to 62 and for men to 65, triggering a rally in share prices. Proposal to be sent to Congress on Feb. 20
Mexico’s President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said the government will expand tax breaks for the state-owned oil producer Pemex, while the company will refrain from issuing new bonds this year and begin prepaying existing liabilities as part of a broad turnaround plan
Argentine inflation unexpectedly accelerated in January with prices rising 2.9 percent from the previous month, compared with the 2.5 percent medium estimate

Asia:
China’s credit growth exceeded expectations in January amid a seasonal lending surge. Aggregate financing was 4.6 trillion yuan ($685 billion), compared with the 3.3 trillion yuan medium estimate in a Bloomberg survey
Two large Chinese borrowers are said to have missed payment deadlines this month. China Minsheng Investment Group Corp. hasn’t returned money to bondholders that it had pledged to pay on Feb. 1, according to people familiar with the matter. Wintime Energy Co., which defaulted last year, didn’t honor part of a restructured debt repayment plan, separate people said

Export growth unexpectedly rebounded in the first month of 2019, while imports fell. Shipments increased 9.1 percent from the year earlier and imports slid 1.5 percent, leaving a trade surplus of $39.2 billion

The producer-price index rose 0.1 percent in January from a year earlier, the seventh straight month it has slowed; consumer price inflation also eased, rising 1.7 percent from a year earlier

A member of the Bank of Korea’s policy board said external uncertainties have risen while the economy is slowing and inflation remains low, according to minutes from the Jan. 24 meeting

Recent economic indicators show U.S.-China trade tensions are having a negative impact on both countries as well as South Korea, Bank of Korea said

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will travel to Hanoi around Feb. 25 for a state visit, South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported, citing an unidentified person

The U.S. envoy to North Korean nuclear talks said it would be hard to resolve remaining disputes before Trump’s upcoming summit with Kim, according to a South Korean lawmaker

Bank of Thailand Governor Veerathai Santiprabhob said the bank is closely monitoring the currency and ready to act on any excessive movements

The Constitutional Court accepted a case calling for the party Thai Raksa Chart, to be dissolved for hostility toward the constitutional monarchy; the accusation reached the court five days after King Maha Vajiralongkorn sunk the party’s bid to make his sister a candidate for prime minister in the March 24 election

India’s parliament ended its final session as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government prepared to go to the polls by May

Dozens of Indian security forces were killed in the disputed region of Kashmir in the most serious terrorist attack to occur since Modi came to power in 2014

The country’s trade deficit widened in January as a rebound in oil prices weighed on the nation’s import bill
Malaysia’s economy grew faster than expected in the fourth quarter, buoyed by exports and strong consumer spending. Gross domestic product rose 4.7 percent from a year ago, compared with a median estimate of 4.5 percent
The country will sell 200 billion yen ($1.8 billion) in Samurai bonds in March at a maximum coupon rate of 0.65 percent, Finance Minister Lim Guan Eng said

Philippine exports decreased 12.3 percent in December from a year earlier, while imports fell 9.4 percent, leaving a trade deficit of $3.8 billion

Taiwan’s government cut its 2019 GDP growth forecast to 2.27 percent from 2.41 percent

EMEA:
Saudi Arabia is to end advice warning its citizens against traveling to Lebanon

Lebanon anticipates allies will help it maintain the pound’s stability by depositing money with its central bank, Deputy Prime Minister Ghassan Hasbani said

Qatar is weighing plans to tap international bond markets as the gas-rich nation seeks to cement its status as a regular issuer, according to three people with knowledge of the matter

Promises by Nigerian presidential candidates to fix an economy that vies with South Africa’s to be the continent’s largest could be unfulfilled unless the country is weaned off its oil dependence

Nigeria’s inflation decelerated in January ahead of the nation’s Feb. 16 general election

Egypt’s central bank unexpectedly cut the benchmark deposit rate by 100 basis points to 15.75 percent as inflationary pressures ease and inflows recover from last year’s rout in emerging markets

Ghana’s inflation rate dropped to a record low in January, giving the central bank more room to continue loosening policy. Consumer prices increased 9 percent from a year earlier, compared with 9.4 percent in December

Namibia’s central bank left its key interest rate unchanged at 6.75 percent and said that the economy will probably expand in 2019 after two straight years of contraction

Uzbekistan emerges from isolation with its first sale of $1 billion in international debt markets

Russia held its biggest ruble debt auction in almost a year after the Finance Ministry dropped a formal issuance target

Turkey posted a current-account deficit in December after running a surplus for four straight months, in a sign that a sharp improvement after last year’s currency crash may be losing steam

Latin America:
President Jair Bolsonaro gave the green light to a proposal to overhaul Brazil’s unsustainable pension system that includes minimum retirement ages and substantial savings to public coffers

Pension reform talks come as the president suffers his first cabinet crisis over a campaign financing scandal involving one of his sons

Central bank members said in the minutes of their most recent meeting that a faster economic recovery depends on clearer signs that the government’s pro-business agenda will be approved

Retail sales fell the most in three years in December, supporting the case for the central bank to further ease borrowing costs

Concern about Mexico’s outlook mounted, with Bank of America Merrill Lynch saying 68 percent of investors in a survey see the country losing its investment-grade rating, up from 41 percent before the Pemex downgrade last month

Industrial production dropped 2.5 percent in December from a year ago, more than the 1.6 percent slide expected by economists

The Argentine peso slipped back into the central bank’s non-intervention zone after the central bank limited bank holdings of Leliq notes, aiming to curb swings in financial flows. and inflation accelerated

Venezuela’s oil minister and head of PDVSA Manuel Quevedo was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department along with four other officials for their ties to President Nicolas Maduro

The International Monetary Fund is said to be preparing a massive financial aid package to help get Venezuela back on its feet once Nicolas Maduro’s regime is gone

Source: Bloomberg