The Economist - 27 April 2024

Год выпуска: April 2024

Автор: The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group

Жанр: Экономика/Политика

Издательство: «The Economist Newspaper Ltd»

Формат: PDF (журнал на английском языке)

Качество: OCR

Количество страниц: 88

HOW STRONG IS INDIA’S ECONOMY?

• India isn’t the next China. But it could still transform itself and the world economy: leader, page 9.
• Over 30 years, India has laid the foundations for growth. For its next phase, a new reform agenda is needed, say Arjun Ramani and Thomas Easton: see our Special report, after page 34.

Where next in the tech wars?

• America, China and the competition to control the world’s most important technologies, page 48.

The overlooked Trump-proof tiger

• Without fanfare, the Philippines is getting richer, page 17.
• The family feud that holds the Philippines back: Banyan, page 19.

Ukraine: what $61bn will buy

• Congress has given Ukraine a reprieve, but more battles lie ahead: leader, page 10, and briefing, page 14.

Has Taylor Swift peaked?

• The musician is at the height of her commercial, but not her creative, power, page 71.

The world this week Politics

• Joe Biden signed a militaryaid package worth $95bn. America’s president said the legislation was necessary to fend off “terrorists” like Hamas and “tyrants” like Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president. Of the aid, $6ibn is to help Ukraine. Arms will begin flowing within days, according to the Pentagon. Congress overwhelmingly passed the bill following six months of deadlock. Republican hardliners called for the sacking of Mike Johnson, their party’s House speaker, who worked with Democrats to bypass them.
• The deal also carries $iybn of aid for Israel, despite concerns that its soldiers are violating human rights in Gaza and the West Bank. Binyamin Netanyahu, the prime minister, responded angrily to reports that America might impose sanctions on an Israeli battalion and promised to “fight” any penalties. The UN said that it had found mass graves containing bodies at two hospitals in Gaza. It called for independent investigations.
• The final tranche of military aid in the package will go to Taiwan. American backing for the island has weighed on relations with China, which claims Taiwan as its own. Antony Blinken, America’s top diplomat, visited China to keep communication channels open—and warn China against providing weapon parts and dual-use products to Russia.
• Student protests against the war in Gaza swept elite American universities, including Columbia and Yale. Hundreds of pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested. Many have set up encampments. The White House condemned “blatantly antisemitic” statements.
• Donald Trump’s hush-money trial kicked off in Manhattan. Prosecutors used their opening arguments to link electoral fraud to undisclosed payments, allegedly made to suppress stories of Mr Trump’s sex life when he ran for president in 2016. In a separate trial in Arizona, several of Mr Trump’s allies, including his ex-lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, were indicted for alleged electoral interference in 2020. The former president was not charged.
• Voting in the world’s largest election started in India. The first of seven stages runs until June. Armed clashes and damage to voting machines were reported at several polling stations, where voting will be repeated. Narendra Modi, the prime minister, and his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are expected to win a third term in power.
• America held joint military drills with the Philippines in the South China Sea. Meanwhile, China hosted naval officials from 29 countries in its port city of Qingdao to discuss threats to maritime security.
• A court in the Philippines banned golden rice, an experimental grain modified to carry beta-carotene, a chemical precursor of vitamin A, added to combat childhood blindness. It cited “severe” health and environmental concerns.

Speaking freely

• Elon Musk, an entrepreneur, clashed with Australia about access to footage of a stabbing in a church in Sydney. He decried a court order to remove the violent video from X, his social-media platform, across the world as a step towards censoring “the entire internet”. Australia’s leader, Anthony Albanese, said Mr Musk was an “arrogant billionaire who thinks he is above the law”.
• Israel struck an Iranian airdefence system in retaliation for Iran’s unprecedented assault on April 13th. American troops in Syria faced renewed attacks, as militias in Iraq fired rockets at their air base.
• Aharon Haliva stepped down as head of Israel’s military intelligence directorate. He is the first senior official to resign over the failure to stop Hamas’s attack in October 2023.
• Fighting around the Sudanese city of el-Fasher ended a truce that had shielded it from the country’s civil war. The city of some 1.6m residents was the last holdout in North Darfur not to have fallen to militias.
• Britain passed a law to send unwanted asylum-seekers to Rwanda to deter people from making the perilous journey across the English Channel. Campaigners decry the law as expensive and inhumane; UN officials have urged Britain to rethink the plan. Rishi Sunak, the prime minister, said transfers would begin by July. Last year some 30,000 people arrived in Britain on boats. Five died when an overcrowded dinghy sank this week.
• Ecuadoreans voted in a referendum to empower the police and army to fight gangsters. The country has become one of Latin America’s deadliest. The unprecedented security measures, spearheaded by Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s president, include harsher penalties for gang-related crimes such as kidnapping, soldiers patrolling streets and legalising extraditions of gang bosses to the United States.
• Pedro Sanchez threatened to step down as Spain’s prime minister as a court opened a corruption investigation into his wife. The Socialist leader cleared his calendar ahead of an announcement on Monday.
• Timur Ivanov, Russia’s deputy defence minister, was accused of taking bribes. (He denies the charges.) Corruption is rife in Russia but high-level crackdowns have been rare since it attacked Ukraine in 2022.
• Activists say Mr Ivanov, who is in charge of military investment projects, profited from construction work in the Ukrainian city of Mariupol after it was bombed by Russia.
• Ukraine tried to press draftage men to join its army as it faced an acute shortage of manpower to fight Russia. Men eligible for conscription will be denied consular services abroad—a measure to “restore fair attitudes” towards those who stayed in Ukraine and those who left, said Dmytro Kuleba, the foreign minister.
• Four Germans were arrested on suspicion of spying for China. One of them, Jian Guo, was a staffer for the far-right Alternative for Germany party.

Too much of a good thing

• Thousands of protesters in the Canary Islands called for curbs on tourism, which they say is spoiling nature and inflating house prices. The Spanish archipelago of 2.2m people had 14m visitors in 2023. Rosa Davila, president of Tenerife, suggested putting in place visitor limits and fees for natural attractions. Elsewhere, Venice became the world’s first city to charge tourists to enter.
• NASA’s longest-running spacecraft started speaking to Earth again after months of relaying gibberish. Voyageri was launched in 1977 to tour the outer planets. It is now humanity’s most remote object. In November the probe began scrambling data. Engineers fixed it remotely.

The world this week Business

• As America’s electric-vehicle industry sputters, Tesla announced gloomy first-quarter results. Revenue fell to $21bn, a decline of 9% year on year, and the firm’s operating margin fell by half. Shareholders, however, found something to celebrate as the firm said that new, more affordable models would go into production sooner than expected. Tesla’s share price, which has fallen by more than a third this year, climbed by 12% after its earnings release.

Boeing, Boeing, gone

• Boeing burned through $3-9bn of cash and made a loss of $355m in the first quarter. The results were better than feared but will not pull the aircraftmaker out of its deep crisis. In March its boss announced his resignation, two months after the blowout of a fuselage panel from one of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes. Among the corrective actions being considered is an acquisition of Spirit AeroSystems, a troublesome supplier it had previously spun off.
• Business activity in Europe rose more than expected in April, according to the pur-chasing-managers’ index. The gain is explained by services, where activity increased by the most since May 2023.
• As part of a bill allocating military aid to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, America’s president, Joe Biden, signed into law measures that will force Byte-Dance, the Chinese parent of TikTok, to divest the popular app within a year or face a ban in America. China’s government is likely to resist any forced sale, and the firm could seek to challenge the law in the courts, arguing that it violates the right to free speech.
• The European Commission launched a probe into the medical-device market in China, claiming that European manufacturers face discrimination in procurement processes. Officials also raided the European offices of Nuctech, a Chinese security-equipment supplier, under new anti-sub-sidy laws. These moves will further strain trade relations between Europe and China, which have been in focus since Europe launched an investigation into Chinese electric vehicles in October.
• Australia’s biggest oil-and-gas producer faced a revolt over its climate action plan. Woodside Energy’s proposal was rejected by 58% of shareholders at its annual general meeting, though the firm’s chairman managed to keep his job, despite a campaign against his reappointment backed by Glass Lewis, a proxy adviser.
• Hong Kong’s largest initial public offering of the year flopped. Shares in Chabaidao plunged by as much as 38% on their first day of trading after the firm, which makes bubble tea, raised HK$2.6bn ($330111).
• The Bank of England has told banks to begin stress-testing their relationships with privateequity firms. The central bank said it had uncovered gaps in banks’ risk-management processes and that the growth of private markets meant banks were exposed across many parts of their business.
• After issuing a profit warning to investors last month, Kering announced bleak quarterly results. Sales at Gucci, its biggest brand, declined by 21% year on year.
• Britain’s FTSE100 crept to a record high after a weaker pound and higher commodity prices boosted the index. This will do little to quell fears of further exits from Britain’s stockmarket, however, or complaints about the index’s poor relative performance in recent years.

Luxury handbagging

• The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) voted to ban noncompete agreements. The American trustbuster said that nearly one in five Americans are bound by clauses that limit their ability to work for a competitor if they leave their em ployer, and that a ban would result in higher wages and more innovation. The US Chamber of Commerce quickly filed a lawsuit challenging the rules in a Texas court.
• Separately, the FTC sued to stop an $8.5bn retail merger. It said that allowing Tapestry, whose brands include Coach and Kate Spade, to buy Capri, which owns Michael Kors, would give it a dominant share of the “accessible” luxury handbag market.
• ВНР offered to buy Anglo American in what would be the biggest mining deal in more than a decade. The allshare merger, which would also involve Anglo hiving off its South African platinum and iron-ore units, would greatly expand the copper footprint of ВНР. Any transaction could face significant regulatory hurdles, including from antitrust authorities.
• Meta increased its revenue to $36bn in the first quarter, a rise of 27% year on year. Profits more than doubled, to $i2bn. Investors, however, were unimpressed by its revenue guidance for the current quarter and plans to boost investment in artificial intelligence.

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