The Economist - 22 March 2025

Год выпуска: March 2025

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: 80

RISE OF THE SUPERHUMAN

• The idea of upgrading humans holds plenty of promise. Realising it will mean driving out the cranks: leader, page 9.
• Dreams of superhumanity are no longer science fiction: briefing, page 15.

Erdogan’s assault on democracy

• His greatest rival, Ekrem Imamoglu, was leading in the polls. Then he was arrested, page 41.

How the stockmarket threatens investors

• American punters are exposed to a sell-off—and so is the economy, page 59.
• Beneath investors’ feet, the ground is shifting: Buttonwood, page 63.

Trump v the judges

• America’s courts should resist wild and expansive claims of presidential power: leader, page 10.
• Donald Trump is testing America’s character as well as its constitution: Lexington, page 24.

What’s in a baby’s name?

• How parents’ choices reveal their fears and hopes, page 71.

The world this week Politics

• Donald Trump held a two-hour telephone conversation with Vladimir Putin to discuss the war in Ukraine. Mr Putin rejected Mr Trump’s call for a ceasefire but said he would refrain from attacking Ukrainian energy infrastructure for 30 days. Soon after making that promise Russia launched a big attack on civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, in Ukraine. Ukraine attacked Russian infrastructure. Mr Trump also spoke to Volodymyr Zelensky, offering to help source Patriot missiles from Europe and suggesting that America could run Ukrainian nuclear plants to protect them from Russian aggression.

The war against the judiciary

• Mr Trump called for the impeachment of a judge who had ordered the suspension of a programme for deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members. The White House was accused of flouting the order by going ahead and deporting the Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador. Mr Trump’s press secretary denied this, saying the plane was already in the air. John Roberts, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, waded in and said that calls to impeach judges were an inappropriate response to a judicial disagreement.
• Daniel Noboa, the president of Ecuador, said that Mr Trump should designate Ecuadorean criminal gangs as terrorists, similar to the designations that the Trump administration has given to gangs in Mexico and Venezuela. Mr Noboa also invited America, Brazil and Europe to send soldiers to join his crackdown on gangs. Most of the world’s cocaine passes through Ecuador.
• The American Senate voted for a Republican spending measure that averted a government shutdown at the last minute. Chuck Schumer, the Democrats’ leader in the chamber, incurred the wrath of his party by voting for the measure, having said he would oppose it. Mr Schumer’s explanation that a shutdown would only empower Mr Trump did little to soothe the progressives in his party who now consider themselves to be “the resistance”.
• Colombia’s finance minister quit after just three months in the job amid a quarrel with the country’s first left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, over budget cuts. Mr Petro has recently replaced 12 of his 19 ministers.
• Israel launched a series of air strikes on Gaza, breaking the ceasefire it signed with Hamas in January. Israel said it was targeting Hamas’s surviving commanders, but over 400 people, including many civilians, were killed, according to the Hamas-run health ministry. Israel also began a new ground offensive and sent troops back into the Netzarim corridor, which splits Gaza down the middle. Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, said this was “just the beginning” and accused Hamas of rejecting proposals to free more hostages. He vowed that all future ceasefire negotiations would be “conducted only underfire”.
• Mr Netanyahu tried to sack Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security service. The Shin Bet has been carrying out investigations against some of the prime minister’s closest aides. The attorney-general, whom Mr Netanyahu is also trying to sack, said the process must be put on hold because of conflicts of interest. Opposition politicians want to take the issue to the Supreme Court.
• American warplanes targeted the Houthis, a rebel group in Yemen that has attacked Israel and ships in the Red Sea. The Houthis are supported by Iran. The Pentagon said its strikes would be “unrelenting” until the rebels stop their attacks.
• Nigeria’s president, Bola Tinubu, declared a state of emergency in Rivers, an oil-rich state in the Niger delta. He also suspended the state’s governor and all lawmakers, claiming the governor, who belongs to an opposition party, had not responded adequately to a pipeline explosion.
• The presidents of Congo and Rwanda called for an immediate ceasefire in the conflict in eastern Congo, following a meeting in Qatar. It was the first time Felix Tshisekedi, of Congo, had met Paul Kagame, of Rwanda, since M23, a militia supported by Rwanda, accelerated its advance in the region earlier this year.
• MPs in Germany’s Bundestag voted to exempt most defence spending from legal restrictions on government debt and to create a €§oobn ($545bn) infrastructure fund. The vote marks a big shift away from the constraints on government spending under the constitutional “debt brake” and will strengthen Germany’s armed forces, potentially reshaping European security policy. The upper house of parliament must also approve the change.
• Turkish authorities stepped up their crackdown on the opposition and arrested Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, over a range of allegations. Mr Imamoglu is likely to be named as the main opposition candidate to challenge Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s strongman president, in an election due in 2028 but which may be called earlier. After Mr Imamoglu’s detention demonstrations were banned in Istanbul for four days.
• Observers estimated that around 325,000 people took to the streets of Belgrade, Serbia’s capital, to protest against government corruption and incompetence. It was the largest demonstration so far in a series of protests sparked by the collapse of a railway-station roof last November, which killed 15 people. The protesters’ ire is directed towards the president, Aleksandar Vucic. The prime minister, Milos Vucevic, an ally of Mr Vucic, formally resigned this week.
• America imposed visa restrictions on officials in Thailand who were involved in the recent forced deportation of 40 Uyghur Muslims to China’s Xinjiang province, where Uyghurs face widespread repression. Marco Rubio, America’s secretary of state and a fierce China hawk, has criticised the deportations.

Oh say, can you see

• Donald Trump ordered funding to be cut for the agency that supports radio stations such as Voice of America and Radio Free Asia, which have upheld the promotion of democracy and reported extensively on human-rights abuses. The White House said they were outlets for “radical propaganda”. China was delighted. Separately, a French politician suggested that America should return the Statue of Liberty, a gift from France. “Absolutely not,” retorted Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, it is only because of America that “the French are not speaking German right now.”

The world this week Business

• The Federal Reserve left interest rates unchanged at its meeting. Markets were more interested in its latest projections for the American economy. The Fed now expects GDP to expand by 1.7% in 2025, down from a previous forecast of 2.1%, and inflation to average 2.7%, up from its projection of 2.5%. Meanwhile, Donald Trump nominated Michelle Bowman, one of the Fed’s governors, to the job of overseeing bank regulation at the Fed. A critic of over-stringent rules, Ms Bowman is expected to take a lighter-touch approach to Wall Street than her predecessor, Michael Barr.
• At its meeting the Bank of Japan kept interest rates on hold at 0.5%. Ueda Kazuo, the central bank’s governor, gave no indication about when it might raise rates again to counter inflationary pressures in Japan, and said that “overseas uncertainty has heightened significantly”, a reference to Mr Trump’s trade wars.

Gold fever

• The risk to the world economy from Mr Trump’s tariffs and tensions in the Middle East spurred the price of gold to another record. The spot price for the precious metal rose above $3,000 an ounce for the first time, as investors turned to their traditional haven during a stockmarket sell-off. The S&P 500 is down by 3% this year and the NASDAQ Composite by 8%.
• The Chinese government unveiled its “special action plan” to get consumers spending more in order to boost the economy. The plan includes increases in locally set minimum wages, expanded workfare programmes and subsidised credit for thrifty consumers. But it provided little detail on the fiscal measures that will be needed to support the new stimulus.
• Alphabet, Google’s parent company, undertook its biggest acquisition to date by agreeing to buy Wiz, a cyber security startup, for $32bn. Wiz works mainly in cloud computing and its customers include Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Azure. SoftBank, meanwhile, agreed to buy Ampere Computing for $6.5bn. Ampere makes processors based on technology from Arm, a chip designer in which SoftBank has a majority stake.
• Around 25,000 developers, software engineers, academics and industry leaders attended Nvidia’s annual showcase conference in San Jose. The chipmaker unveiled its new products, including Blackwell Ultra. The new chips are better at “reasoning”, shorthand for the technique behind the latest generation of chatbots.
• JX Advanced Metals, which makes advanced products for semiconductors from rare metals and copper, raised ¥439bn ($2.9bn) from its flotation on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. It was Japan’s biggest IPO since SoftBank sold off its telecoms arm in 2018.
• In a complaint filed at a federal court in New York, Ben & Jerry’s alleged that Unilever, its parent company, had sacked its chief executive, David Stever, for continuing to uphold its “social mission”. The ice-cream maker often strays from its business of producing tubs of Cookie Dough and Caramel Chew-Chew to call for a ceasefire in Gaza and support for Palestinian refugees. Unilever, which is in the process of spinning off its ice-cream business, didn’t immediately comment.

Drowning in debt

• The Court of Appeal in London dismissed a challenge to a £3bn ($3.9bn) rescue plan for Thames Water, Britain’s biggest provider of water and sewage services. A group of creditors are loaning Thames Water the money with a hefty interest rate of 9.75%. Some junior creditors, who stand to lose out because of the deal, took the matter to court. Many politicians think the debtladen company should instead be nationalised.
• BYD’s share price hit a record high after the Chinese maker of electric vehicles said its new battery-charging system could provide a car with a range of 470km (292 miles) in five minutes, about the time it takes to fill a petrol engine. That depends on the voltage supplied at charging stations among other things, but the new system could put BYD ahead of Tesla and Mercedes in the race for fast-charging EV solutions.
• Meanwhile, Xiaomi, a Chinese company best known for smartphones but which has expanded into electric cars, raised its delivery target for EVs this year from 300,000 to 350,000. Xiaomi’s EV business accounts for 9% of its revenues.
• Two NASA astronauts who were stranded at the International Space Station splashed down to Earth in a SpaceX capsule, along with two other astronauts. Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore arrived at the ISS in June on board a test flight of Boeing’s Starliner, but the spacecraft encountered technical problems and returned to Earth without its crew.

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