Asia-Pacific markets trade mixed as investors assess Trump tariff impact​on February 12, 2025 at 6:14 am

Shares in Chinese food delivery platform Meituan fell as much as 7.1% Wednesday after e-commerce giant JD.com entered the food delivery space on Tuesday.

JD.com announced the launch of JD Takeaway on Tuesday. To entice food service companies to use the new service, the company said merchants that register before May 1 will not have to pay commissions for one year, according to Reuters.

Aside from Meituan, Alibaba’s Eleme is a dominant player in China’s food delivery market.

— Amala Balakrishner, Reuters

Shares in Chinese tech giant Alibaba surged nearly 7% Wednesday to hit a nearly four-month high.

This follows news reports that the company is working with Apple to roll out artificial intelligence features for iPhone users in China.

The report, citing the tech and finance website The Information, also noted that Apple and Alibaba have submitted the AI features they co-developed for approval from China’s cyberspace regulator.

It also noted that Apple had previously worked with Alibaba’s rival Baidu, but had been dissatisfied with the progress of the AI models. Apple had also considered AI models from other Chinese tech giants such as Tencent, ByteDance and DeepSeek, the report said.

Chelsey Tam, senior equity analyst at Morningstar says the partnership “validates Alibaba’s capabilities in AI,”as the right partner will “reinvigorate iPhone sales in China.”

Tam said she isn’t surprised that Apple is partnering with Alibaba, instead of its peers.

“Tencent, which probably has more diversified data than Baba …was classified as a Chinese military company in the U.S. and this could potentially be a reason as to why Apple went with Alibaba,” she said. “Bytedance [has] yet to resolve its issues regarding TikTok in the U.S. so maybe that is why they were eventually passed over as well,” she wrote Wednesday.

Tam said the deal with Apple could see more companies wanting to partner with Alibaba.

Shares in Baidu are down 3.32% while that in Tencent is up 2.25%.

— Amala Balakrishner

Contract electronics manufacturer Foxconn is not looking to buy Nissan Motor, Reuters reported.

Instead, it aims to cooperate — rather than buy— the Japanese automaker, Foxconn chairman Young Liu said.

“Purchasing its shares is not our aim; our aim is cooperation,” he told reporters on Wednesday at Foxconn’s headquarters in New Taipei.

The statement follows news that Nissan ended merger talks with Honda last week, in a deal that would have created the world’s third-largest automaker by sales.

Liu also mentioned that Foxconn is in talks to work with French automaker Renault, which has a 36% stake in Nissan.

Shares in Nissan fell as much as 7.07% on Wednesday.

— Amala Balakrishner, Reuters

The Vietnamese government is likely to raise the country’s GDP growth target to 8% this year from 6.5% to 7%, estimated earlier, Reuters reported.

The stronger growth will be led by an expansion in its manufacturing output and foreign investments, Vietnam’s Minister of planning and investment Nguyen Chi Duong reportedly said in parliament on Wednesday.

He also foresees a 12% growth in Vietnam’s imports and exports this year, bringing its trade surplus to around $30 billion.

The Southeast Asian country is among the beneficiaries of the “China Plus One” strategy that has nudged companies to diversify their supply chains and operations out of China.

Its GDP expanded by 7.09% in 2024, thanks to broad-based growth across its services, industrial and agro-forestry-fishery sectors.

— Amala Balakrishner, Reuters

The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended Monday’s trading session 123.24 points higher, or 0.28%, to close at 44,593.65. The S&P 500 gained 0.03% to end at 6,068.50, and the Nasdaq Composite slid 0.36% lower to close at 19,643.86.

— Pia Singh