Bloomberg Businessweek-Asia Edition April 18, 2022

● Worldwide, coronavirus cases have passed 500m More than 6.2 million have died, and 11.5 billion vaccine doses have been given. Appearing on ABC’s This Week on April 10, Anthony Fauci, President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, said Covid-19 was “not going to be eliminated.” People from now on have “to make their calculation of the amount of risk that they want to take.” ● Saying peace talks were “at a dead end” on April 12, President Vladimir Putin vowed to continue his invasion of Ukraine. After failing to capture Kyiv, Russia has scaled back its aims to solidifying its control in the Donbas, a region partly seized by Kremlin-backed separatists in 2014. ● Ukrainian children passed through the Przemysl train station in Poland on April 9. The UN says the invasion has…

Life isn’t getting easier for the Federal Reserve. U.S. inflation remains way above target, supply blockages show no sign of easing, the labor market is stretched—and the pressure on prices continues to build. Many investors are expecting a faster pace of tightening from the Fed, but overdoing it risks pushing the economy into recession. Striking the right balance in monetary policy has rarely looked so difficult. A consensus is emerging that the Fed will have to tighten more forcefully. Hawks on its policymaking committee are being heard more attentively, and officials who’ve taken a softer line up to now seem to be coming round. It’s acknowledged that critics who’ve been warning about persistent inflation for months were right. Even so, the risk that too much tightening might crush the expansion hasn’t…

▶ The U.S. Supreme Court is hearing an appeal of Biden v. Texas on April 26. A lower court said the administration had to enforce Trump immigration rules it wanted to rescind. ▶ The Bank of Japan sets interest rates on April 27. With the BOJ sticking to its stimulus stance, analysts say its key short-term rate may not budge from –0.1% until later this year. ▶ The Reserve Bank of Australia publishes the minutes of its April meeting on the 18th. The RBA kept the cash rate unchanged at a record low of 0.1% for the 16th month in a row. ▶ On April 19 the U.S. Census Bureau reports March housing starts. With interest rates rising, February’s figure of almost 1.77 million, the highest since June 2006, will likely decline. ▶ On…

James Cox counts himself lucky. The owner of a 687-acre farm in Gloucestershire, a bucolic county in the southwest of England known for its quaint villages and rolling landscape, bought all his fertilizer for the 2022 planting year well before the recent surge in prices—meaning he had enough to feed his wheat and oats, as well as the barley that’s just sprouting. And he doesn’t intend to use it all. “We are already considering reducing to some extent how much fertilizer we put on this year’s crop so we have some left over for next year,” Cox says, citing soaring prices for synthetic nutrients. He’s trying to calculate exactly how far he can stretch his reserve without compromising the quality and quantity of his harvest. “How much dare we trim the…

At first glance, the barriers to Yamaguchi, Japan-based Uniqlo becoming China’s favorite clothing brand look impossibly high. Encouraged by government leaders, Chinese shoppers are growing increasingly nationalistic as political tensions with liberal nations mount. Anti-Japanese sentiment in the country is long-standing and pervasive. And competition from both local and global fashion rivals is only getting fiercer. Nonetheless, the global retailer known for functional basics such as T-shirts, jeans, and thermal underwear secured 1.4% of China’s hugely fragmented $350 billion apparel market in 2021—a larger share than any other single brand. Founded by one of Japan’s richest men, Tadashi Yanai, and owned by Fast Retailing Co., Uniqlo has succeeded in China thanks in part to political savvy, smart product strategy, and moving into the market early, analysts say. Other global brands targeting China’s…

When Val Nasubo wanted a drink, she did what most people in Kenya do: headed out to a bar to share a round with friends. But now the 31-year-old data analyst from Nairobi has discovered she prefers having a drink at home. “I love the comfort of fixing myself a drink after a long day at work,” she says. “I’m always searching for new cocktail recipes.” Alcohol producers in Africa hope that Nasubo’s stay-at-home approach is part of a trend that could solve a tricky problem. The pandemic proved especially difficult for makers of drinks there. Diageo Plc has said that 75% of its alcohol revenue in Africa came from drinking establishments and restaurants before the pandemic. So when the spread of Covid-19 kept patrons away from crowded social settings, consumers…