
China plans to reduce the average tariff rate on imports from most of its trading partners as soon as October, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday. In July, China cut import tariffs on almost 1,500 consumer products ranging from cosmetics to home appliances as part of efforts to open up its economy, the world’s second biggest.

The United States has supplanted Brazil as the European Union's top supplier of soybeans since a deal in July with President Donald Trump to avert a trade war, according to EU data seen by Reuters on Thursday.

China and the United States plunged deeper into a trade war on Tuesday after Beijing added US$60 billion of US products to its import tariff list in retaliation for President Donald Trump's planned levies on US$200 billion worth of Chinese goods.

United States president Donald Trump escalated his trade war with Beijing, imposing 10% tariffs on about US$ 200 billion worth of imports in a move one senior Chinese regulator said “poisoned” the atmosphere for negotiations.

United States President Donald Trump has instructed staff to move forward with the next round of tariffs on Chinese goods, US media have reported. The tariffs are expected to apply to about US$ 200bn worth of imports from China, including electronic parts and consumer goods such as handbags.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) said that the U.S. likely surpassed Saudi Arabia and Russia earlier this year to become the world’s top crude oil producer. The EIA based its disclosure on preliminary estimates in its Short Term Energy Outlook which is released every month.

Stocks in Europe reversed earlier gains by Thursday's close to finish lower, as investors digested fresh news out of the central banking sphere. The pan-European STOXX 600 closed down 0.15%, with the majority of sectors falling into negative territory. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 slipped 0.43% by the close, while France's CAC 40 ended a touch lower, off 0.08%, and Germany's DAX rose 0.19%.

Under fire over his handling of Russian election meddling, US President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to strengthen election security by imposing sanctions on foreign countries or people who try to interfere in the US political process. The order, coming only eight weeks before congressional elections on November 6, drew immediate criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers as too little, too late.

United States voters love the performance of the economy, but it has failed to translate into higher approval for President Donald Trump, according to one new poll. The disconnect is perhaps the biggest challenge facing Republicans as they battle to keep control of Congress in November's midterm elections.

Eight alleged criminals were killed on Sunday at the most important military complex in Venezuela amid the revelations about plans for a coup supported by the government of the United States.