Live news: Asia-Pacific stocks fell after Powell’s remarks about rising interest rates

China’s embassy in Germany has criticized a reported plan to ban Huawei and ZTE from parts of the European country’s 5G network.

Germany’s federal interior ministry said on Tuesday that the government is conducting a review of the security risks posed by components already installed in the country’s 5G networks.

German media also reported that the government was planning to ban certain parts made by Chinese telecom groups Huawei and ZTE, which played a large role in German telecom networks.

If the reports are correct, China. . . “It expresses its deep dissatisfaction and its great bewilderment,” the embassy said late on Tuesday.

Japan’s current account deficit hit a record high in January, according to Finance Ministry data released Wednesday morning.

At 1.98 trillion yen ($14.41 billion), Japan’s trade deficit for the month significantly exceeded market expectations. It was also the largest deficit the country had ever recorded for a single month.

With Asia’s second-largest economy reliant heavily on imports of fuels and raw materials, officials have blamed rising energy costs — as well as weak exports to China over the Lunar New Year holiday — for the record deficit.

Stocks fell in the Asia-Pacific region on Wednesday morning as investors feared hawkish comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell.

South Korea’s Kospi index fell 1.1 percent and Australia’s Standard & Poor’s/ASX 200 index fell 0.9 percent. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng Index futures indicated a decline of 1.3 percent.

Powell warned on Tuesday that the Fed is ready to return to higher interest rates to fight inflation. His comments lifted the yield on two-year US Treasury notes to more than 5 percent for the first time since 2007. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite fell 1.5 percent and 1.2 percent, respectively.

Jakarta: China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will meet in the Indonesian capital to discuss the South China Sea, where tensions have been running high amid overlapping territorial claims between a number of ASEAN member states and Beijing.

Earnings: Cathay Pacific announces its earnings. Traffic at Hong Kong Airport has rebounded from its pandemic lows, but passing numbers are still significantly lower than 2019 levels.

Markets: Stocks fell in Japan while futures fell in Hong Kong. Wall Street stocks fell after Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell warned that the central bank may raise interest rates more aggressively if the economy grows too quickly.

Elon Musk said Twitter could return to posting positive cash flow next quarter, as the CEO tries to cut costs, attract advertisers, and work around the platform’s technical problems.

Speaking at a Morgan Stanley investor conference on Tuesday, Musk said cash flow in the company he bought for $44 billion last year will break even in the second quarter, adding that it could turn positive in that period.

He said Twitter’s costs are expected to be about $3 billion annually, down from the $4.5 billion he said the company would have incurred in 2023.

Read more about Musk’s cost-cutting plans here.

Senate Democrats and Republicans have introduced a bill that would give the administration new powers to block Chinese apps that pose security threats, including popular video-sharing platform TikTok.

Mark Warner, the Democratic chairman of the Intelligence Committee, announced the bill Tuesday as part of an effort to create a more coordinated approach across government to countering threats from countries including China, Russia and Iran.

The Restriction Act requires the Secretary of Commerce to establish a process to identify ICT threats and find solutions to address them.

Read more about the proposed bill here.

The two-year Treasury yield, which moves according to interest rate expectations, topped 5 percent for the first time since 2007.

The yield peaked at 5.01 percent – up 0.13 percentage point on the day – after comments from Federal Reserve Chairman Jay Powell on Tuesday, who indicated that the US central bank may be ready to accelerate the pace of interest rate increases in response. Hotter than expected economic data.

Investors now expect interest rates to peak at 5.6 percent in September, with a chance of one cut by December.

Ukraine has denied involvement in last year’s bombings that damaged Nordstream gas pipelines connecting Russia and Western Europe, after media reports in the United States and Germany suggested that pro-Ukrainian agents may have been behind the attacks.

“Although I enjoy collecting amusing conspiracy theories about the government of Ukraine, I must say: Ukraine has nothing to do with the Baltic Sea incident and has no information on ‘pro-Ukrainian sabotage groups,’” Mykhailo Podolyak, advisor to President Volodymyr Zelensky wrote.

Podolak was responding to a report in the New York Times that said U.S. officials had reviewed new intelligence indicating that a “pro-Ukrainian group” had carried out underwater bombings that hit the Nordstream 1 and 2 pipelines.

Read more about the alleged perpetrators here.