The Economist - 5 April 2025

Год выпуска: April 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: 84

Ruination day: How to limit the global damage

• Donald Trump’s mindless tariffs will cause economic havoc. But the rest of the world can limit the damage: leader, page 9, and analysis, page 58.
• America’s trade policies return to the 19th century, page 57.
• India seeks opportunity in the trade war, page 27.
• Europe cannot fathom what Trumpian America wants: Charlemagne, page 42

How MAGA could help China

• America’s president could end up making China great again: leader, page 10, and briefing, page 15.
• Who will harness Al first, America or China? Page 50.
• China cannot decide whether Mr Trump is a threat or an opportunity: The Telegram, page 49.
• American universities under attack: Lexington, page 23.

Penalising Le Pen

• France’s hard-right leader should be punished, but not by being banned from the next election: leader, page 11.
• Marine Le Pen’s ban polarises France, page 38.

Refugee-camp economics

• What happens in an economy when everyone earns the same? Page 63.

George Foreman: boxer, preacher and griller

• The two-time world heavyweight champion: Obituary, page 74.

The world this week Politics

• A French court’s decision to bar Marine Le Pen, the leader of the hard-right National Rally (RN), from running for president in 2027 sent shock waves through the country’s politics. The court found that Ms Le Pen and eight other politicians had spent money earmarked for use in the EU parliament to pay for staff in the RN. Her supporters accused the establishment of suppressing the election frontrunner. Ms Le Pen has lodged an appeal. She welcomed a statement by the Paris Court of Appeal that it would issue a verdict in the summer of 2026.

Realpolitik

• Finland joined Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland in announcing that it would withdraw from a global treaty banning the use of landmines, as it seeks to protect its long border with Russia. It is also increasing defence spending to at least 3% of GDP. But on a visit to Britain the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said his country would have to “mentally prepare” to restore relations with its neighbour at some point, prompting the Kremlin’s spokesman to say that Russia was open to resuming ties.
• Russia called up another 160,000 men between the ages of 18 to 30 for the armed forces, the largest cohort of conscripts since 2011. The raw recruits won’t be sent to fight in Ukraine. Meanwhile, Russia’s deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, said America’s proposals to end the war were not acceptable in their current form, because they do not meet Russia’s demands relating to the conflict’s “root causes”.
• A senior official in Hungary’s government said it would withdraw from the International Criminal Court. The announcement was made soon after Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, arrived in Hungary for a visit. Last November the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Mr Netanyahu for alleged war crimes, which Viktor Orban, the populist Hungarian prime minister, said he had no intention of acting on.
• Israel expanded its military objectives in Gaza to include seizing large parts of the Palestinian territory and turning them into buffer zones along the border with Israel. This will entail a “large-scale” evacuation of the population from combat areas. The group representing the remaining Israeli hostages held by Hamas said it was dismayed, and that instead of seeking to end the war, Israel was returning to areas where it has “already fought time and time again”.
• Meanwhile, humanitarian conditions in the devastated strip continued to deteriorate. The World Food Programme said all bakeries it supported in Gaza had been forced to shut for lack of fuel and flour and that it would run out of hot meals within two weeks.
• Mr Netanyahu quickly withdrew his appointment of Eli Sharvit to lead Israel’s domestic intelligence service, the Shin Bet, following a political backlash. Mr Sharvit had reportedly participated in protests against judicial reforms that swept Israel in 2023. Mr Netanyahu fired Ronen Bar as head of the Shin Bet last month, but the courts have said he must remain in the job until they rule on his dismissal.
• The African Union sent a team of mediators to South Sudan, as a fragile peace deal agreed to in 2018 came close to collapse. Tensions have increased between Salva Kiir, the president, and Riek Machar, the country’s senior vice-president, risking another civil war. Mr Machar was recently put under house arrest.
• The foreign ministers of three countries in the African Sahel, Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger, headed to Moscow for talks on strengthening ties with Russia. All three countries are ruled by military juntas and have kicked out French and other Western troops that were helping fight jihadists.
• America’s beleaguered Democrats took some comfort from the election of a liberal judge to Wisconsin’s Supreme Court, which retains the court’s liberal majority. The race took on a national significance when Elon Musk ploughed $25111 into supporting the conservative candidate. In Florida the Republicans handily held on to two seats in special elections, albeit with reduced majorities.

Health crisis

• Around 10,000 employees across various federal health departments started to receive their redundancy notices. Robert E Kennedy junior, the health secretary, announced the lay-offs. After a new commissioner for the Food and Drug Administration was sworn in, its most senior vaccine official resigned, claiming that Mr Kennedy wants only “subservient confirmation of his misinformation and lies”. The FDA’s tobacco regulator was removed from his job.
• Pete Hegseth, America’s defence secretary, ordered the armed forces to introduce physical-fitness standards for armed-combat roles that are “sex neutral” and do not lead to a service member being held to a lower standard. The order reduces the likelihood that women will pass the tests for combat roles.
• Data provided by the US border agency showed that the number of migrants crossing the border from Mexico fell in March to its lowest ever monthly tally. Around 7,180 crossings were recorded compared with the monthly average of 155,000 over the previous four years, proof, the agency said, that it is securing the border.
• In Haiti armed gangs attacked Mirebalais, a town about 30km (19 miles) north of the capital, Port-au-Prince, storming a prison and releasing 500 inmates. The gangs maybe trying to gain control of roads leading into Port-au-Prince.
• At least 3,000 people died and many remained missing in the strongest earthquake to hit Myanmar in over a century. Mandalay and Sagaing bore the brunt. The ruling junta took advantage of the chaos to step up air strikes against the rebels it is fighting. The earthquake was also felt in Bangkok, causing a skyscraper under construction to collapse and many other buildings to sway. Water spilled from swimming pools perched at the top of luxury blocks and hotels.
• China conducted military drills in the East China Sea close to Taiwan, firing long-range live ammunition that the Chinese command said was aimed at “simulated targets of key ports and energy facilities”. Taiwan denounced the drills as more harassment. China called the Taiwanese president, Lai Ching-te, “a parasite”.
• Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, called a general election for May 3rd. Polls show that both Mr Albanese’s Labor Party and the opposition Liberal Party may struggle to gain a majority in parliament.

The world this week Business

• Donald Trump unveiled his long-trailed and much-dreaded new list of tariffs. They were worse than expected. Mr Trump announced import levies of 10% on all goods entering America, but the European Union will face reciprocal tariffs of 20%, India 27%, Japan 24%, Vietnam 46% and China an additional 34%, taking its overall tariff rate to 65%. Many other countries also received higher tariffs. Mr Trump’s other punitive duties placed on industries such as cars and steel will at least avoid the additional country rates. Goods from Mexico and Canada that do not comply with the North American trade pact will still face the previously announced 25% tariff.

Happy now?

• Markets slumped after Mr Trump’s announcement. Uncertainty about trade policy and worries about the economy were factors behind American stockmarkets registering their worst quarter since the third quarter of 2022. The S&P 500 fell by 4.6% from January to March and the NASDAQ Composite by more than 10%. Nvidia’s stock tumbled by 19%, Alphabet’s by 18% and Apple’s and Microsoft’s by 11%. By contrast the Europe STOXX 600, London’s FTSE 100 and Germany’s DAX all made gains. No market is likely to be immune from Mr Trump’s latest offensive in the trade war.
• Gold reached another record of $3,167 a troy ounce. Investors have flocked to the commodity, a traditional haven in times of stockmarket stress, pushing the price to its best quarterly performance since 1986.
• Tesla delivered 336,681 electric vehicles in the first quarter, far fewer than analysts had expected and down by 13%, year on year. The company’s stock fell by 36% in the first three months of the year. Tesla’s arch-rival, BYD of China, sold 416,388 pure evs, an increase of 39%. Its overall deliveries of passenger vehicles rose by 58%.
• Eyebrows were raised on Wall Street at Elon Musk’s announcement that xAI, his artificial-intelligence business, had bought X, his social-media platform, for $45bn, $ibn more than the $44bn he paid for what was then Twitter in 2022. He gave no details of how the deal was structured, causing some to wonder if regulators would investigate. Mr Musk said that the intertwined companies would be more easily able to combine computing power, data and Al models.
• SoftBank and other investors injected $40bn into OpenAl in a new round of fund-raising that valued the firm behind ChatGPT at $зооЬп. OpenAl is changing its structure from a non-profit to a for-profit company. If it were listed at its current valuation it would make the top 30 on the S&P 500.
• According to reports, the American government sent a letter to several large companies in Europe telling them to comply with Donald Trump’s ban on diversity initiatives. The letter says that the order applies to firms that are either a supplier or service provider to the American government, even if based outside the US.
• China’s market regulator opened a review into Hong Kong-based Cl< Hutchison’s sale of dozens of ports to BlackRock, an American firm. The review caused the sign-off on the deal to be delayed. The acquisition is set to include ports in the Panama Canal, which Mr Trump has hailed as America taking back control of the waterway. It is unclear if China’s leader, Xi Jinping, has made a final decision on the deal, amid speculation that he may just be trying to gain leverage over Mr Trump.
• The euro zone’s annual inflation rate fell again in March, to 2.2%. The inflation rate for services, which the European Central Bank has been watching closely when it makes its calculations on interest rates, dropped to 3.4%, the lowest level in three years.
• In his first big speech since becoming Intel’s chief executive last month Lip-Bu Tan promised to turn the chipmaker’s fortunes around. Intel has been struggling to compete with the likes of TSMC and is far behind in the race to develop chips for Al. Mr Tan promised to bring about a “cultural change” that would mean the company acts more like a startup and recruits new talent. “Bureaucracy kills innovation,” he said. Intel announced 15,000 job cuts last August.

Rolling in it

• An annual survey compiled by Forbes estimated that there are now 3,028 billionaires in the world, up by 247 from last year (the list is based on share prices and exchange rates as of March 7th). America has 902 of them, followed by China and Hong Kong with 516 and India with 205. Germany has 171 and Russia 140. Britain was tenth, with 55 billionaires. Elon Musk’s detractors were disappointed to learn that with a net worth of $342bn he is still the world’s richest man; Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos are some way behind. The list’s new arrivals include Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jerry Seinfeld and Bruce Springsteen.

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