Xi’s plea for normalcy

The primary objective for Xi Jinping during two global summits in South America was apparently to push for fewer trade barriers so he can focus on reviving China’s economy. In more than a dozen meetings with world leaders over the span of a week, the Chinese premier repeatedly sought to win assurances that nations would uphold the international free trade system. But his pleas may have been drowned out by the actions of others. His pitch came as Donald Trump prepares to turbocharge the trade war he started six years ago with 60% tariffs on Chinese goods. And Xi’s case also wasn’t helped by his ally Vladimir Putin, who shook markets by removing some guardrails on the use of nuclear weapons in his war on Ukraine. “Xi’s message is that China supports economic globalization and the current international order while the US is a disruptor that will damage the world economy,” said Neil Thomas, a fellow for Chinese politics at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis. “Xi wants to position himself to third countries as the reasonable party in US-China relations, and the Trump administration as irresponsible if they do not maintain dialogue and guardrails.” —David E. Rovella

Putin’s war is indeed escalating after months of bloody attrition. Ukraine used long-range US missiles to hit a military base on Russian territory after weeks of Kremlin attacks on Ukrainian civilians in strikes on residential buildings and neighborhoods. Moscow in turn stepped up its latest threat of a nuclear response to conventional attacks. The recent arrival of North Korean troops to support Russian forces appears to have triggered the latest escalation toward superpower confrontation—as perhaps has the prospect of Trump’s return to the White House. “The current situation offers Putin a significant temptation to escalate,” Tatyana Stanovaya, a senior fellow at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center, said in a social media post. Such a move would allow both Putin and Trump to blame President Joe Biden for the spiraling conflict and serve as a premise for direct talks, she said.

Last year, some Western leaders started boasting of Russia’s “strategic defeat” in Ukraine. This was always a terrible idea and a line Putin never tires of citing as he pushes the false claim that he sent his armies into Ukraine to defend Russia from Western aggression, Marc Champion writes in Bloomberg Opinion. Now, after more than 1,000 days of bloodshed, we’re finally beginning to see the outlines of such a strategic defeat emerge. Only the potential losers are Ukraine and its allies.

The prospect of the Kremlin using nuclear weapons and the surrounding chaos of an escalating war in Ukraine sent Wall Street running for cover this morning. But by afternoon, fear of global catastrophe gave way to visions of Big Tech cash, with Nvidia climbing ahead of its results. Bitcoin, juiced by the promise of a friendly US administration come January, extended its post-election rally. Options trading signaled Nvidia’s results Wednesday might be the most-important market catalyst left this year—even more than the Federal Reserve’s December meeting. The chipmaker at the forefront of the artificial-intelligence boom rose 4.9%, leading gains in the S&P 500. Here’s your markets wrap.

Huawei’s ambitions to create more powerful chips for AI and smartphones are said to have hit major snags because of US sanctions, stalling a major Chinese effort to match American technology. Huawei is designing its next two Ascend processors, its answer to Nvidia’s dominant accelerators, around the same 7-nanometer architecture that’s been mainstream for years. That’s because US-led restrictions prevent Huawei’s chipmaking partners from procuring state-of-the-art extreme

One of Julian Robertson’s “Tiger seed” funds is suing to invalidate the 2004 investment deal by which the late Wall Street icon handed over millions of dollars in exchange for a share of future profits. In a lawsuit filed Monday in New York, Hound Partners accused Tiger Management of failing to live up to what it characterized as a marketing agreement. Tiger has already made more than $150 million on a $23 million investment, Hound alleged, but its referral of new clients has fallen off dramatically. Hound, which managed $2.2 billion as of last December, is asking for a court order terminating the deal.

The era of explosive growth in multistrategy hedge funds is over, according to billionaire Ken Griffin. And he should know since he runs one of the biggest ones. These funds have gobbled up cash in recent years by delivering mostly steady gains even during periods of market volatility. But assets managed by multistrategy hedge funds dropped slightly to $366 billion this year, the first decline since 2016.

The Biden administration is beginning to refer to Edmundo González Urrutia as Venezuela’s president-elect, its strongest acknowledgment yet that the opposition candidate won July’s presidential election. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken told partners about the decision in a meeting yesterday at the Group of 20 meetings in Rio de Janeiro. While the US and other countries have previously concluded that González had more votes than incumbent strongman Nicolás Maduro, the Biden administration hasn’t gone as far as using the term “president-elect” until now.

Companionship bots are far from new. But the tech—like that of the broader industry—has been advancing quickly, and the experiences of users may hint at what’s to come, as AI soulmates become ever-more realistic. In the second episode of the Bloomberg Originals series Posthuman, Emily Chang meets the entrepreneurs behind these computer companions, and the people who say they provide them with much-needed comfort and understanding. At a time when loneliness is seen as a mental health epidemic, can empathy-on-demand help bridge the gap, or make it worse?