Kim Jong Un and Moon Jae-in held a much publicised and historic summit overnight. This was the first meeting between North and South Korean leaders in over a decade. Summit took place in demilitarised zone but for first time since end of Korean war in 1953 a North Korean leader also crossed south of the border. Three key topics were on the agenda: denuclearization of Korean Peninsula, improvement of bilateral relations and formal peace settlement. Summit has so far been high on symbolism but not obvious how much will be achieved or agreed to in practise and the Korean won was only marginally stronger overnight. Kim Jong Un and US President Trump are due to meet in June – at best an unpredictable event.
French GDP growth slowed sharply in Q1 to 0.3% qoq from 0.7% qoq in Q4 2017, likely highlighting the broader slowdown in Eurozone economic growth. Focus will now turn to the first estimates of Q1 GDP for Spain (08.00), UK (09.30) and US (13.30). These data are effectively over two months old (and thus backward looking) and often subject to subsequent revisions. But these four economies account for nearly 25% of world GDP and while GDP is an imperfect measure it’s still arguably the best yardstick of economic activity which governments and central banks have at their disposal. Also data will provide important first insights into whether international institutions’ forecasts of near 4% global GDP growth in 2018 are credible (IMF forecasting 3.9%, up from 3.7% in 2017).
