San Francisco Financial News

Xi Jinping, US President Joe Biden has said that for him, the idea of a successful meeting is to get back on a normal course of corresponding, and being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another whenever there is a crisis, US-based ABC7 news reported. Even though Biden has a full schedule for the 30th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting, his meeting with Xi Jinping on Wednesday is the most crucial one. Their four-hour meeting is scheduled to take place at San Mateo County's Filoli Estate. «To get back on a normal course of corresponding, being able to pick up the phone and talk to one another when there's another crisis,» Biden said, shortly before departing for San Francisco on Tuesday. «Being able to make sure our militaries still have contact with one another,» he told reporters at the White House. According to ABC7 News, there are reports circulating that say that an agreement could be announced on Wednesday that would address source material involved in the illegal fentanyl trade. Prior to their respective trips to San Francisco, Biden hosted meetings with fellow APEC leader Joko Widodo of Indonesia on Monday at the White House. The president of the most populous Muslim nation in the world, Widodo, has been vehemently critical of Israel's actions in the Gaza Strip; thus the visit to the Oval Office came at a rather uncomfortable time, reported ABC7 News. In contrast, Biden has not wavered in his support of Israel's right to self-defence in the wake of the 1,200-death onslaught on October 7 by Hamas terrorists.

Mukesh Aghi, CEO of the US-India Strategic and Partnership Forum (USISPF) told PTI that it is important that communication starts between the US and China, the two largest global economies. The much-anticipated summit between Biden and Xi will take place on Wednesday on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit, which the US is hosting in San Francisco from November 11 to 17. “I think the summit is important both from President Biden's perspective and also President Xi's perspective. China is struggling with its economy.

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai acknowledged in federal court on Tuesday that he sometimes marked documents as «privileged» and never turned off a setting that caused internal chats to delete automatically after one day. Pichai was in court in San Francisco to defend Alphabet's Google from a lawsuit by Epic Games that alleges its app store policies amount to an illegal monopoly and have caused consumers to pay artificially high prices.

Thailand is pitching a multibillion-dollar project that will significantly cut shipping times between the Indian and Pacific oceans by bypassing the Malacca Strait— one of the world’s busiest sea lanes. Prime Minister Srettha Thavisin told investors in San Francisco on Monday that the project can cut travel time by an average of four days and lower shipping costs by 15%. With traffic volumes projected to exceed the Malacca Strait’s capacity by 2030, the new project will ensure seamless flow of goods, he said. The so-called Landbridge project will cost about 1 trillion baht ($28 billion), with seaports to be built on either side of the country’s southern peninsula and linked by highway and rail networks, according to the government.

scheduled to meet prior to the 30th Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in San Francisco, aiming to mitigate tensions in what's viewed as a critical global rivalry. Leaders from the 21-member forum will gather at the global summit. However, the Biden-Xi bilateral will be the marquee moment of the forum, as it comes amid rising tension between the two nations following a series of events touched off by the shooting down of a Chinese spy balloon that had wafted across the US earlier this year.

By Greg Bensinger

Adobe's $20 billion bid for cloud-based designer platform Figma is set to face an EU antitrust warning in the coming days, three people familiar with the matter said, a move that would ratchet up pressure on the Photoshop maker to offer remedies. Tech deals around the world have recently attracted tougher antitrust regulatory scrutiny amid fears that some bigger companies may be acquiring rival startups to shut them down or boost their market power.

BERLIN—The German capital has long been a lab for daring experiments in tackling the crisis of affordable housing that is plaguing city dwellers from San Francisco to Hong Kong. Anti-gentrification rules are so strict that in some neighborhoods, luxury renovations such as walk-in showers, balconies or cement tiles are turned down. Airbnb is tightly restricted while rental caps have forced thousands of landlords to slash rents.

President Joe Biden wants to show Asia-Pacific leaders that he remains focused on the region even as his administration is grappling with the wars in Ukraine and the Mideast and a looming government shutdown in Washington

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol says he will discuss international response to the purported North Korean-Russian weapons deal during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in San Francisco this week

President Joe Biden and Indonesian President Joko Widodo have formalized closer ties between their countries at the White House

President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping’s have no shortage of difficult issues to discuss when they meet Wednesday in the San Francisco area

The United States is hosting the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation conference this week for the first time since 2011

by Shirin Ghaffary

Economist Stephen Moore discusses negative economic trends in Democrat-run cities and Moody's lowering its outlook on the U.S. credit rating.

The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit has drawn global attention to discussions on regional economic cooperation, including crypto regulations. 

Humane has unveiled its much-anticipated artificial intelligence-based gadget - Ai Pin. Humane is a San Francisco-based startup founded by former Apple executives Imran Chaudhri and Bethany Bongiorno. Chaudhri was part of Apple for nearly 20 years and led the design of the iPhone's home screen, while Bongiorno was a software development lead for several of the company's products, including iPhone, iPad and Mac, Bloomberg reported.

By Yukiko Toyoda, Kiyoshi Takenaka and Laurie Chen

Katherine Tai and discussed ways to further boost trade and investments between the two countries. Goyal is in the US for a four-day visit. He reached San Francisco on November 13.

On a 2011 visit, then US vice president Joe Biden went for lunch at Yaoji Chaogan, sparking a social media craze over his "noodle diplomacy". Outside the eatery in one of the capital's historic hutong neighbourhoods this week, Chinese people expressed hope that a meeting between leader Xi Jinping and now President Biden might help the two men to cook up a diplomatic success of their own. Biden and Xi will hold talks this week in San Francisco — their first in just over a year — set to address hot-button issues from trade to geopolitical tensions. Near Beijing's 700-year-old Drum Tower, passersby told AFP the two leaders needed to learn to get along for the sake of the world. The China-US relationship is «tense, you can see that», said economics student Yuan, who only offered her family name. «But they're also very closely linked,» she added. «These are two very large countries with huge global economic systems, so this is very important. Their relationship has a great impact on the entire world's economy.» Outside the packed bistro — where steaming bowls of soup and buns offered a welcome respite from freezing weather outside — retired driver Yu said he welcomed the meeting between the rival powers' leaders and expressed a little admiration for the US president.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Monday pushed back on Moody's decision last week to cut its outlook on U.S.