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WASHINGTON — US President Donald Trump on Sunday raised hopes that the United States and China would settle their trade dispute ahead of a March 1 deadline as negotiators met to wrap up the latest round of talks.

The US president said in a Tweet that the trade talks on Saturday were “very productive”.

Talks were extended through the weekend in a bid to iron out differences on changes to China’s treatment of state-owned enterprises, subsidies, forced technology transfers and cybertheft.

The two sides have had no agreement on an enforcement mechanism. Washington wanted a strong mechanism to ensure that Chinese reform commitments were followed through to completion, while Beijing insisted upon what it called a “fair and objective” process.

On Sunday, top officials including US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Chinese Vice Premier Liu He arrived for talks at the Winder Building, which houses the headquarters of the United States Trade Representative, an hour later than usual.

Both Mnuchin and Liu went inside without commenting, with Liu smiling when asked if the two sides would have a deal by the end of the day.

Trump said on Friday there was a “good chance” a deal would emerge, and that he might extend the March 1 deadline and move forward with a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

Extending the deadline would mean putting on hold a scheduled increase in tariffs to 25 per cent from 10 per cent on $200 billion worth of Chinese imports into the United States.

An extension would hold off a worsening of the trade war that has already disrupted commerce worth hundreds of billions of dollars of goods, slowed global economic growth and riled financial markets.

On Friday, Trump and Mnuchin said US and Chinese officials had reached an agreement on currency issues, but did not give details. US officials have long argued that China’s yuan is undervalued, giving it a trade advantage and partly offsetting US tariffs.

China has committed to buying an additional 10 million metric tonnes of US soybeans.

Reuters reported on Wednesday that both sides were drafting memorandums of understanding (MOUs) on cybertheft, intellectual property rights, services, agriculture and non-tariff barriers to trade, including subsidies.

But Trump said he did not like MOUs because they are short-term, and he wanted a long-term deal.

Trump said the biggest decisions could be reached when he meets with Xi, probably in Florida next month, and that their talks may extend beyond trade to encompass Chinese telecommunications companies Huawei Technologies and ZTE Corp.

NEW DELHI/MUMBAI — India outlined a new draft policy for its burgeoning e-commerce sector on Saturday, focusing on data localisation, improved privacy safeguards and measures to combat the sale of counterfeit products.

The proposed overhaul, which would likely increase operating costs for the sector, comes two months after the country modified regulations governing foreign direct investment in e-commerce.

That forced retail giants Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart-owned Flipkart to restructure their Indian operations, and the latest reforms spell further upheaval.

“In the future, economic activity is likely to follow data,” the widely expected draft policy document said. “It is hence vital that we retain control of data to ensure job creation within India.”

The new rules call for the housing of more data centres and server farms locally, amid a broader push for data localisation by the South Asian nation, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing online markets. 

India’s central bank in 2018 forced payments providers such as Mastercard and Visa Inc to store Indian users’ data locally.

“Steps will be taken to develop capacity for data storage in India,” the draft e-commerce rules said. “A period of three years would be given to allow industry to adjust to the data storage requirement.”

Flipkart and Amazon said they were going through the draft rules and will share their inputs with the government.

The proposed rules also seek the creation of a “legal and technological framework” that can help impose restrictions on the cross-border flow of data generated by users, moves that may affect not just e-commerce platforms but also social media firms such as Alphabet Inc.’s Google and rival Facebook Inc.

India also plans to mandate all e-commerce firms to provide access to their data stored abroad whenever official requests are made. The rules, which come at a time New Delhi is working on a broader data privacy law, also forbid companies from sharing data stored abroad with other businesses even with user consent.

Other proposals include mandating all e-commerce websites or apps operating in India to have a locally registered business entity, and increasing liability of e-commerce players to ensure products sold on their platforms are not counterfeit or pirated.

“Lot of issues covered, bold decisions,” the All India Online Vendors Association, which represents more than 3,500 online sellers, said in a Tweet.

New Delhi has invited comments on the proposed rules by March 9, after which the rules are likely to be formalised.

SAN FRANCISCO — Google has a new cloud computing boss and big ambitions to someday produce more revenue from that business than from advertising.

Now comes the hard part: winning over big-spending customers.

Alphabet Inc.'s cloud computing division remains a distant third behind Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp. in terms of global revenue, according to analysts' estimates. A few major companies manage their data on Google's servers. But Google has nowhere near the vast customer base of Amazon, according to a new Reuters analysis of company regulatory filings.

Businesses generally are not required to disclose their cloud vendors. Reuters found 311 out of about 5,000 worldwide that did so in 2018. While not comprehensive, the data provide a window into Google's challenge.

Thirty five of those companies named Google as a cloud provider. The largest by market capitalisation were oil major Total SA and bank HSBC Holdings Plc. 

Amazon Web Services led with 227 clients, including travel company Expedia Group Inc. and industrials giant Siemens AG. Microsoft's Azure cloud had 69 firms, among them weapons maker Axon Enterprise Inc. and business data firm Dun & Bradstreet Co.

Thirty four of the companies cited multiple clouds. 

The previously untracked data show the work ahead for Thomas Kurian, who is weeks on the job as senior vice president of Google Cloud. Kurian has vowed to double down where Google has seen promising results. Specifically, he plans to target governments and top companies in retail, manufacturing, healthcare, media and finance.

"A lot of our focus as we go forward is making sure that our sales organisation has the background and the ability to sell to large, more traditional companies," Kurian said at a Goldman Sachs investor conference last week. "There's enormous appetite in those companies to consider Google."

Google declined to comment or make Kurian available for an interview.

People familiar with his plans said he is looking to reshape his division's culture. A key part is developing or acquiring easy-to-use, industry-specific corporate applications, an area that Amazon and Microsoft do not dominate. 

"It's about the on-ramp onto their cloud," said Daniel Ives, a New York-based financial analyst following the cloud industry for Wedbush Securities. "The main way to get that is through applications."

A 22-year veteran of Oracle Corp., Kurian gave the database company fresh life as the product leader behind its move to selling cloud services. His hire is already making potential customers reconsider Google, said Ray Wang, founder of Constellation Research, a Monta Vista, California-based firm that helps businesses negotiate cloud deals.

"They've worked with him," Wang said. "There's a trust factor that wasn't there before."

Kurian also must reassure some investors bewildered by Google's cloud ambitions: diversifying revenue beyond advertising is a plus, but it is not coming cheap.

Google, Microsoft and Amazon combined spent nearly $53 billion on capital expenses last year, driven by data centre projects to house their clouds. 

With gross margins of 20 per cent or less, selling cloud storage or tools for which customers need specialised staff is less lucrative for a small vendor, industry experts said. But margins on the type of software Kurian likely wants to offer can top even the 60 per cent of Google's ad business.

"The next wave of growth is going to have to come from the heavy hitting applications," said Kerry Liu, chief executive at Rubikloud, which helps retailers with cloud projects.

'Geeky, techy platform'

Google got serious about the cloud around 2016, five years after Amazon Web Services had become a multibillion-dollar behemoth. But Google's reputation for limited customer support has attracted mostly newer businesses or those with significant tech know-how.

Mike Fisher, Etsy Inc.'s chief technology officer, said Google's superior AI tools helped win over the New York-based crafts marketplace. Fisher expects data-crunching algorithms to account for 25 per cent of its server use this year, up from 10 per cent last year.

"We've been more pleasantly surprised than we thought," Fisher said of the cloud's benefits. 

Advertising software company OpenX recently agreed to spend at least $110 million on Google Cloud over five years. The Pasadena, California firm bet its clients would benefit from transacting on the same infrastructure as Google's ads system. 

"It's a bit more of a geeky, techy platform, but we're that kind of company," said Chief Technology Officer Paul Ryan. 

Kurian’s plan 

To attract more traditional corporate clients, Google Cloud will need to do some handholding, executives at its partners and rivals said. 

Kurian is well-suited to the role. Two of his former colleagues said his follow-up and candid disclosures about product limitations helped seal deals at Oracle. An early riser, Kurian impressed staff with his meticulous preparation for morning meetings as well as his recall of the tiniest details of clients' systems from years before.

Kurian also managed billions of dollars in acquisitions at Oracle, including the purchases of software firms BEA Systems and Taleo. 

Applications could come through similar deals and internally: Google is testing product recommendation software for shopping apps, a person familiar with the project said, to add to its small set of specialised tools.

Kurian told the investor conference that "you will see us continue to expand our footprint there".

BENGALURU — European aircraft maker Airbus deliveries of its A320neo aircraft are back on track in India with fewer problems being seen with the narrowbody jet's Pratt & Whitney engines, a senior company executive said on Wednesday.

"Pratt has informed Airbus that engine issues have come down by a factor of four in the last 12 months," said Airbus' India head Anand Stanley, on the sidelines of the Aero India airshow in Bengaluru.

Last month, India's aviation safety watchdog forced airlines to make extra checks on their Airbus A320neo aircraft fitted with Pratt & Whitney engines, as part of new safety protocols after temporary grounding orders affected the planes last year.

IndiGo, India's biggest carrier by market share, and its low-cost rival GoAir, both fly the A320neos.

The aircraft, which entered service in early 2016, boasts significant fuel efficiency benefits, but it has been plagued by teething issues with its engines that have forced Interglobe Aviation-owned IndiGo and Wadia Group-owned GoAir to regularly ground a number of the planes.

This caused a backlog in deliveries of the planes by Airbus.

IndiGo has over 60 A320neos in its fleet and is one of Airbus' biggest global customer with over 400 more A320neo and A321neo jets on order. GoAir has about 30 A320neos in its fleet and over 100 more of the jets ordered.

Stanley said that the reliability rate on A320neo engines is now 99.6 per cent and that it has retrofitted engines of about 95 per cent of the A320neos in service. It expects to finish work on the remainder in the next two months. 

PARIS — A consumer boycott on Danone products in Morocco contributed to the French food giant's profits and sales sinking last year, it said on Tuesday.

The world's largest yoghurt maker said in a statement that its net profit fell by 4.1 per cent to 2.35 billion euros ($2.65 billion) in 2018.

Sales dropped by 2.1 per cent in the last three months of the year, driven by a 35 per cent plunge in Morocco, where there has been unprecedented boycott campaign over high prices against Danone milk and two other well-known brands since April.

The boycott's impact in 2018 "on total net sales was a decrease of -178 million euros (-$201 million) versus 2017 net sales, of which around two thirds come from losses in milk sales, and one third from losses in dairy products", the company said in a statement.

Chief financial officer, Cecile Cabanis, said in a conference call that there was still a market share for Danone's products in Morocco, but she did not expect to return to growth there before the end of 2019.

The boycott campaign against the high cost of living in Morocco spread like wildfire online last year, calling on Danone milk, Afriquia service stations and Sidi Ali water — the leaders in their sectors — to lower their prices.

Despite the boycott, the company said its full-year reported sales were down just 0.7 per cent.

It benefited from sales of dairy products stabilising in Europe, growing strongly in the CIS region that includes most ex-Soviet countries and also improving in Latin America.

In North America, sales in the "essential dairy and plant-based" food products division surged by 12.2 per cent to five billion euros.

Sales of infant formula products fell in China, but Cabanis said the decline was slowing, dropping from 20 per cent in the third quarter to 10 per cent in the fourth.

Looking ahead to the current year, Danone is aiming for like-for-like sales growth of 3 per cent and an operating margin above 15 per cent. 

Following the announcement, the company's share price bumped upwards by 0.3 per cent in morning trading in Paris.

WASHINGTON — The White House received on Monday a Commerce Department report on the auto industry that could trigger tariffs against imported cars and intensify tensions with Europe.

In response, the EU promised a quick and effective reply if the United States were to impose import duties on European autos, a spokesman for the European Commission said on Monday.

Brussels issued the threat after the US Commerce Department filed the report.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel has labelled as "frightening" the prospect that European car imports could be declared a national security threat to the United States.

Two people familiar with the matter earlier told AFP that the Commerce Department report has concluded that auto imports pose such a threat.

As part of his "America First" agenda, US President Donald Trump has already imposed a range of tariffs against allies, as well as China.

"Today, Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross formally submitted to President Donald J. Trump the results of the Department of Commerce's investigation into the effect of imports of automobiles and automobile parts on the national security of the United States," a Commerce Department statement issued late Sunday said.

It gave no further details. Sunday was the deadline for Ross to file his report.

Trump ordered the investigation in May, and after receiving the report he now has 90 days to decide whether or not to impose tariffs.

Trump has threatened 25 per cent duties on European autos, especially targeting Germany, which he says has harmed the American car industry.

In July, Trump and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker reached a trade truce under which they pledged no new tariffs while negotiations continued.

The White House has already used the national security argument — saying that undermining the American manufacturing base impairs military readiness, among other claims — to impose steep tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.

His action drew instant retaliation from the EU, Canada, Mexico and China.

In 2017 just under half of the 17 million cars sold in the United States were imported, most of them produced in Canada and Mexico. Those two countries have reached a new free trade pact with Washington and are expected to be exempt from any new automobile duties.

German automobile groups last year exported 470,000 cars from Germany to the United States, according to the VDA manufacturers' federation.

BAGHDAD — Stuck between an endless waitlist for a government job and a frail private sector, Iraqi entrepreneurs are taking on staggering unemployment by establishing their own start-ups.

The first murmurs of this creative spirit were felt in 2013, but the sweep of the terror group Daesh across a third of the country the following year put many projects on hold.

Now, with Daesh defeated, co-working spaces and incubators are flourishing in a country whose unemployment rate hovers around 10 per cent but whose public sector is too bloated to hire.

Many self-starters begin their journey at an aptly-named glass building in central Baghdad: The Station.

There, they sip on coffee, peruse floor-to-ceiling bookshelves for ideas and grab a seat at clusters of desks where other stylish Iraqis click away at their laptops.

“We’re trying to create a new generation with a different state of mind,” said Executive Director Haidar Hamzoz. 

“We want to tell youth that they can start their own project, achieve their dreams and not just be happy in a government job they didn’t even want,” he told AFP. 

Youth make up around 60 per cent of Iraq’s nearly 40 million people.

After graduating from university, many spend years waiting to be appointed to a job in the government, Iraq’s biggest employer.

Four out of five jobs created in Iraq in recent years are in the public sector, according to the World Bank.

In its 2019 budget, the government proposed $52 billion in salaries, pensions and social security for its workers — a 15 per cent jump from 2018 and more than half the total budget.

But with graduates entering the workforce faster than jobs are created, many still wait indefinitely for work.

Among youth, 17 per cent of men and a whopping 27 per cent of women are unemployed, the World Bank says.

After Daesh, 

innovation reigns 

When Daesh declared Mosul its seat of power in Iraq back in 2014, resident Saleh Mahmud was forced to shutter the city’s incubator for would-be entrepreneurs.

With Mosul now cautiously rebuilding after the militants were ousted in 2017, Mahmud is back in business.

“Around 600-700 youth have already passed by Mosul Space” to attend a seminar or seek out resources as they start their own ventures, said the 23-year-old.

He was inspired after watching fellow Mosul University graduates hopelessly “try to hunt down a connection to get a job in the public sphere”.

“A university education isn’t something that gets you a fulfilling job,” he said.

Another start-up, “Dakkakena”, is capitalising on Mosul’s rebuilding spirit, too.

The online shopping service delivers a lorry-full of home goods every day to at least a dozen families refurnishing after the war. 

“On the web, we can sell things for cheaper than stores because we have fewer costs, like no showrooms,” said founder Yussef Al Noaime, 27. 

Noaime fled Daesh to The Netherlands, where he was introduced to e-commerce. When he returned home, the computer engineer partnered with another local to found their venture.

A similar service, “Miswag”, was set-up in the capital Baghdad in 2014 and last year reported hundreds of thousands of dollars in profits. 

Banks and big dreams 

On an autumn day, some 70 young Iraqi innovators converged for a three-day workshop in Baghdad on founding start-ups. 

They flitted among round tables planning projects, their Arabic conversations sprinkled with English terms.

“What we’re doing is showing youth what entrepreneurship is — not necessarily so they succeed, but so they at least try,” said organiser Ibrahim Al Zarari.

He said attendees should understand two things: First, that the public sector is saturated. Secondly, that oil is not the only resource on which Iraq — OPEC’s second-largest producer — should capitalise.

More than 65 per cent of Iraq’s GDP, and nearly 90 per cent of state revenues, hail from the oil sector. Many youth turn to it for work, but it only employs 1 per cent of the workforce.

Widespread corruption and bureaucracy also weaken Iraq’s appeal for private investors. The World Bank ranks it 168th out of 190 for states with a good business environment.

Under current legislation, private sector employees are not offered the same labour protections or social benefits as those in the public sector.

NEW YORK — Wall Street rallied on Friday, with the Dow and the Nasdaq posting their eighth consecutive weekly gains, as investors grew hopeful that the United States and China would hammer out an agreement resolving their protracted trade war.

All three major US indexes ended the session higher, and for the fourth straight session the S&P 500 held above its 200-day moving average, a key technical level.

Talks between the United States and China will resume in Washington next week, with both sides saying progress has been made toward resolving the two countries' contentious trade dispute.

Tariff-vulnerable industrials provided the biggest lift to the blue-chip Dow, led by bellwethers Boeing Co., 3M Co., United Technologies Inc. and Caterpillar Inc.

"This may be just false hope with the tariff situation as thorny details still need to be agreed upon," said David Carter, chief investment officer at Lenox Wealth Advisors in New York. "It's good news but it’s not over yet."

Indeed, the trade row's effects were reflected in Deere & Co.'s earnings report, which came in below analyst estimates in part because of slowing international trade. The agricultural equipment manufacturer's shares fell 2.1 per cent.

"Solving the trade issue could give global growth the boost it needs," Carter added. "Absent a tariff solution, growth will continue to slow."

With nearly 80 per cent of S&P 500 companies having reported, fourth-quarter earnings season is largely in the rear-view mirror. Analysts now see a profit increase of 16.2 per cent for the quarter, according to Refinitiv data.

Going forward, however, the outlook continues to worsen. First quarter earnings are currently seen falling by 0.5 per cent, the first year-on-year decline since mid-2016. 

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 443.86 points, or 1.74 per cent, to 25,883.25, the S&P 500 gained 29.87 points, or 1.09 per cent, to 2,775.6 and the Nasdaq Composite added 45.46 points, or 0.61 per cent, to 7,472.41.

All 11 major sectors in the S&P 500 ended the session in the black.

The rate-sensitive financial sector led the S&P 500's advance, bouncing back from Thursday's sell-off as US Treasury yields crept back up.

Shares of PepsiCo. were up 3.1 per cent, even after the snack and beverage company forecast a surprise drop in full-year profit.

Nvidia Corp. rose 1.8 per cent following the company's forecasts for its current fiscal year topping Wall Street expectations.

The chipmaker gave the second-largest boost to the closely-watched Philadelphia SE Semiconductor index, which was up 0.5 per cent. The index has jumped nearly 18 per cent so far this year.

Amazon.com shares were down 0.9 per cent after scrapping its plans for a New York headquarters.

In fact, each of Amazon's fellow FAANG members, a group of momentum stocks which also includes Facebook Inc., Apple Inc., Netflix Inc. and Google parent Alphabet Inc. also ended the session in the red.

Advancing issues outnumbered declining ones on the NYSE by a 3.66-to-1 ratio; on Nasdaq, a 2.58-to-1 ratio favoured advancers.

The S&P 500 posted 47 new 52-week highs and no new lows; the Nasdaq Composite recorded 86 new highs and 16 new lows. 

Volume on US exchanges was 7.07 billion shares, compared with the 7.43 billion average over the last 20 trading days. 

PARIS — Nearly 30 years ago Airbus began charting a new course for air travel with a mammoth jet that would shuttle hundreds of people to far-flung cities worldwide, but harsh economic realities eventually got the better of the A380 superjumbo.

After the plane's launch just over 11 years ago, the final two A380s will be delivered in 2021, Airbus said on Thursday, marking the end of an ambitious but ultimately misguided bet.

"The A380 was a strategic feat which put Airbus on equal footing with Boeing, by dethroning the 747," said Sebastian Maire, an aviation expert at the consulting firm Kea and Partners.

But from the start the huge double-decker struggled to get off the ground, causing headaches for executives as they tried to convince airlines to take a punt on how to move millions of passengers in the future.

The idea was to prepare for a surge in traffic as middle classes emerged in Asia and other developing regions, eager to join the growing ranks of business and leisure travellers as globalisation rippled across the globe.

With the A380 airlines would cut fuel costs and pollution by moving more passengers via fewer planes between major airports, where smaller aircraft would then bring them to their final destinations.

But this "hub and spoke" model would require huge investments by both airlines and airports, which had to lengthen and widen runways and hangers to accomodate the huge wingspans.

And in the end industry dynamics proved the opposite: airlines instead opted for more direct flights between more cities, using midsize planes like Boeing's hugely popular 787 Dreamliner.

"In 2000, when we took the decision to launch the A380, we didn't know what the market would look like 20 years later," Airbus's outgoing CEO Tom Enders told French daily Le Figaro in an interview on Thursday.

"It was a risky decision."

Hopes and headaches 

Few would have imagined how it would all end when heads of state and industry executives gathered in January 2005 at the Airbus headquarters in Toulouse, southwest France, to celebrate the plane's first factory rollout.

The project dovetailed perfectly with the desire of European nations to build up their aerospace groups into a continental powerhouse, capable of taking on Boeing and other US rivals.

Ex-president Jacques Chirac treated the leaders of Britain, Germany and Spain to lunch after the glitzy unveiling, lauded as proof of Airbus's success.

Huge sections of the A380 would be built at Airbus factories spread across Europe before being transported to Toulouse for final assembly.

But the launch enthusiasm quickly faded as production snafus and missteps emerged, in part reflecting the difficulty in integrating national teams with different corporate cultures.

Electrical wiring proved especially vexing, leading to problems that would cost billions of euros to fix and a series of delivery delays.

Inaugural client Singapore Airlines had to wait an extra 18 months before finally launching the first commercial flight in October 2007.

While passengers raved about the quiet and spacious cabins, production delays continued, heightening concerns that the plane would turn out to be a white elephant.

'Our customers love it' 

Despite an initial burst of orders mainly from Middle East and Asian clients, most airlines balked at the A380, which could be profitable only if every seat was sold on every flight.

The global financial crisis of 2007-08 put paid to that strategy, and made other airlines wary of committing to the costly plane, which currently has a list price of 446 million euros a piece.

Airbus managed to chalk up just over 320 orders for the A380, and had already slowed production in recent years before pulling the plug on Thursday.

"Our customers love the aircraft. It's very efficient in the way we operate and we are pleased with it," Willie Walsh, head of British Airways and Iberia parent IAG, said earlier this month.

But Walsh said the price tag was keeping him from adding to BA's fleet of 12 superjumbos.

"We have made it clear to Airbus that we might consider some additional aircraft, but it would only be at a price that we would find attractive," he said.

Boeing, by contrast, has seen its bet on the smaller but more fuel efficient Dreamliner, garnering more than 1,100 orders since it entered service in 2011.

At a conference call with Airbus management Thursday, few analysts dwelled on the A380's failure, instead congratulating the company on the robust 29 per cent jump in 2018 profits.

"We often praise the ability of new-economy companies, especially American ones, to quickly take decisions and experiment with new ideas," said Philippe Plouvier, an associate at the Boston Consulting Group.

"It would be a mistake to criticise Airbus for exploring a new frontier in aerospace, and then decide to move on to something else," he added.

LONDON — Investors hungry for progress on resolving a US-China trade war seized on US President Donald Trump's comment that he could let a March 1 deadline for a deal with China "slide", taking this as a cue to buy stocks and sell bonds on Wednesday. 

As US Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer prepared for talks in Beijing to hammer out a trade deal, markets cheered the signal that there could be an extension to a tariff truce.

European shares followed Asia's lead with the pan-European STOXX 600 up 0.4 per cent, slightly weakening by midday, while US futures climbed 0.2 per cent.

Chemicals, carmakers and luxury goods saw the biggest gains as investors snatched stocks whose valuations have been hit by trade tariffs and a slowdown in China.

China's blue-chip CSI 300 rose around 2 per cent to a four-month high overnight, with IT shares leading gains.

Trump said on Tuesday that he could see letting the March 1 deadline for reaching a trade agreement with China "slide for a little while" if the two sides were close to a complete deal.

He added he is "not inclined" to delay raising tariffs.

"There's still a level of uncertainty there but at least the rhetoric does not show he is digging his heels in, so the market has quite rightly taken it as a positive," said Justin Onuekwusi, fund manager at Legal & General Investment Management. 

"But of course the key thing is he can change his mind."

Investors remained concerned about underlying trends of slowing economic growth and weaker earnings. Analysts have slashed their 2019 earnings growth estimates for developed stocks from around 10 per cent to 5 per cent. 

As investors went back into risky assets they sold safe-haven government bonds, driving yields up. The 10-year US Treasury yield hit a one-week high at 2.7 per cent.

In Europe, political uncertainty in Spain bubbled up.

Spain's IBEX fell into the red, down 0.2 per cent, and Spanish bond yields rose after parliament rejected the Socialist government's 2019 budget proposal, raising the chances of a snap general election.

"If they do call elections we may see a bit of noise in the near term, but for us that would be one to fade because the tail risks are pretty low in terms of getting a party that's negative for markets," said Mohammed Kazmi, portfolio manager at UBP in Geneva.

Central bank support 

Risk assets have also been helped up by central banks' dovish shift.

The Federal Reserve (Fed) will chart plans to stop letting its bond holdings roll off "at coming meetings", Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester said on Tuesday, signalling another major policy shift for the Fed after pausing interest rate hikes.

"Mester's comments follow on quite clearly from what Powell said at the recent press conference, which was already quite a dovish shift which the market wasn't expecting," said UBP's Kazmi.

"Everyone wants to catch this rally because they know at some point it will fade, there will have to be some sort of adjustment later this year because this is pretty much as dovish as [the Fed] can get without moving to a rate cut."

Progress on another issue unnerving markets — the US government shutdown — also provided a boost to risk appetite.

The Cboe Volatility Index, Wall Street's so-called "fear gauge", dropped overnight to 14.95, its lowest level since October.

The US dollar was on the defensive: its index against six major currencies barely managed a 0.1 per cent rise to 96.793.

Slipping deadlines were front and centre not only on the trade war front but also in Brexit.

Sterling held flat against the dollar as investors awaited a Brexit debate in parliament later in the day, during which proposals on Brexit extension would be discussed once again.

Emerging market stocks faltered, trading flat on the day. BAML on Tuesday said investors saw emerging markets as the "most crowded" trade, for the first time ever.

In commodities, oil prices surged after OPEC said it cut production sharply in January, and as US sanctions hit Venezuela's oil exports.

US WTI crude oil futures were up 1.1 per cent at $53.71 per barrel, while Brent crude futures rose 1.3 per cent to $63.23.

London copper prices eyed their first session of gains in five as hopes of a trade deal soothed concerns over the economy in China, the world's biggest metals consumer.