Closing summary
On Wall Street, stock indices have made modest gains after buoyant results from US lenders Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo.
Government bonds and the dollar are steady, after Donald Trump hinted at a potential exemption of cars and pars from his latest tariffs.
Shares in carmakers around the world have jumped on the news, with Peugeot and Chrysler owner Stellantis up 6.7% and South Korea’s Hyundai Motor Co rising by 4.3%.
The Dow Jones industrial average rose by 0.5%, the S&P 500 gained 0.7%, and the Nasdaq Composite increased by nearly 0.8%.
European markets have clocked up chunkier gains: the UK’s FTSE 100 index is 1.4% ahead while Germany’s Dax has risen by 1.5%, France’s CAC is up 0.8% (with gains limited by luxury group LVMH, whose shares slumped by 7.7% after disappointing results) and Italy’s FTSE MiB has leapt by 2.5%.
The UK government said it had bought enough raw materials to keep Britain’s last steelmaking blast furnaces at British Steel’s Scunthorpe site operating for the “coming weeks”.
Ministers took control of the plant on Saturday after reports that the company’s owners, China’s Jingye Group, were trying to shut it down, by starving the plant of the iron ore and coking coal needed to keep the blast furnaces burning.
Two ships carrying materials sent from the US arrived at the port of Immingham in Lincolnshire, and a third ship carrying coking coal and iron ore is on its way to the UK from Australia after a legal dispute between British Steel and Jingye was resolved.
The first shipments were welcomed by steelworkers’ union Community, which said the arrival of the materials was a “huge relief” after Jingye’s “disgraceful actions” risked thousands of job losses, while British Steel said it offers “great hope” for the future.
The business secretary did not rule out Chinese firms being involved in the British steel industry in the future. Jonathan Reynolds suggested that bids from the country would be looked at in “a different way” to those from other nations, but said that the dispute over the North Lincolnshire site was because of “one specific company”.
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Thank you for reading. We’ll be back tomorrow. Take care! – JK
Updated
Canada's inflation unexpectedly slows to 2.3%
Inflation in Canada unexpectedly slowed in March to 2.3%, slightly increasing the chances of an interest rate cut tomorrow.
Prices for fuel and holidays declined, with airfares plunging as people avoided trips to the US.
Annual consumer price inflation fell to 2.3% from 2.6% in February, according to Statistics Canada, while economists had expected it to stay at that rate.
The core measures of inflation, which strip out volatile items like food and energy, stayed elevated, but also eased slightly, and were lower than expected.
The economist Philip Smith, who used to work for Statistics Canada, said on X:
Statistics Canada today released the 12-month CPI change in March. It was 2.3%. This means the inflation rate remains well within the Bank of Canada's "Goldilocks zone", between 1% and 3%, as it has now since December 2023. #cdnecon pic.twitter.com/wJ8MfMHzn0
— Philip Smith 🇨🇦🇺🇦 (@PhilSmith26) April 15, 2025
Canadian consumer prices unexpectedly cooled as prices fell for gasoline and travel tours, with airfares plunging as passengers avoided trips to the US https://t.co/cgiRPj9IFG
— Bloomberg (@business) April 15, 2025
